Pain & Palliative Care

Pain management during hospitalization may require the intervention of the Mobile Pain Unit (MPU) at the request of the care teams receiving the patient.

This unit specifically takes care of acute pain, whether post-operative or induced by care… in both adults and children.

It facilitates the implementation of drug therapies (such as the manipulation of analgesics, the administration of Equimolar Mixture of Oxygen and Nitrous Oxide…) and non-drug therapies (hypnosis, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation…). Outpatient follow-up of subacute pain may be offered in certain complex situations to prevent it from becoming chronic.

The Mobile Pain Unit (UMD) also helps alleviate cancer pain (caused by the disease itself, treatments, and their complications) by coordinating follow-up care with the referring specialist and the patient's primary care physician. This approach is part of a supportive oncology care plan involving other healthcare professionals. The mobile pain team provides outpatient consultations and day and week hospital admissions, depending on the individual's needs.

Palliative care : this is active care within a holistic approach to the person suffering from a serious, progressive, or terminal illness. Its objective is to relieve physical pain as well as other symptoms and to address psychological, social, and spiritual suffering.

Those who provide palliative care and support consider the patient as a living being until the very end, and death as a natural process. They seek to avoid unreasonable investigations and treatments. They refuse to intentionally cause death. They strive to preserve the best possible quality of life until death and offer support to bereaved relatives.

The various members of the Mobile Palliative Care Team travel as consultants to assess, in collaboration with healthcare professionals, the challenges faced by patients with serious and advanced illnesses, addressing medical, nursing, and psychosocial needs. Requests for intervention from the team come from a variety of sources: physicians, healthcare professionals, patients, and families. For effective collaboration, the approval of the physician in charge of the department requesting the team is required.

The team's role is:

• to advise and support the approach of the existing care team, particularly regarding the assessment and prevention of overall suffering for the patient and their loved ones,
• to help relieve distressing symptoms that hinder the patient's quality of life,
• to support loved ones,
• to facilitate the return home of patients in conjunction with the attending physician and possibly home care structures, Home Nursing Care Service (SSIAD) and Home Hospitalization (HAD),
• to offer bereavement support to those close to the family and friends.