Non-Medical Pain Control Techniques

In addition to pharmacologic treatment of pain, hospice staff and volunteers must learn to be creative in the use of other pain control techniques, such as:
  • Relaxation Therapy
  • Distraction: music, mediation, massage
  • Biofeedback
  • Hypnosis
  • Art and Music Therapy
  • Pet Therapy

Such therapies not only help control pain, they also increase a patient's sense of control and self-esteem.

We must remember that palliative care is intensive care.  Inadequate control of physical symptoms in patients with terminal illnesses is no less a failure than inadequate control of arrhythmias in patients with reversible cardiac disease.

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