St. Joseph's Healthcare System

Joining Dr. Derek Desilva is Dr. Mark Rosenberg, Chairman of Emergency Medicine at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson NJ.

"Part of the care for seniors in the Emergency Department requires understanding of serious illness and palliative medicine. Palliative medicine is taking care of somebody's symptoms, non-curative symptom management for serious illness. It could be taking care of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, pain and other non-pain symptoms. The most important thing for someone with a serious illness is that they understand their illness. There has to be transparent communication what the doctor knows about the illness, where it might progress, what the endpoint might be with the illness. Most important is the patients have to define their goals of care how much aggressive treatment do they want or not want, if they're seriously ill do they want to make it to a certain point, what are their goals of care. What's interesting about life is you have to plan for the worst and hope for the best. That's how it is with any serious illness, palliative medicine is kind of like an insurance policy, let me find out what i need to do and then if I survive and do very well from this illness all the better.  The key is patients want to go home with serious illnesses, they don't want to die in the hospital. If I am the leading expert in symptom management I can get you home comfortably rather than keep you in the hospital to control your symptoms. The family and the patient, siblings, children, they all need support if the parent or loved one has a serious illness or a life-threatening illness. The whole family has to be supportive when any member of the family has a life-threatening or serious illness. The support has to come from the caregiver side, palliative medicine is a team approach."