Services

Palliative Care Team

From our complementary perspectives our team works together on your behalf to provide an extra layer of holistic and personalized support for very effective symptom management.

Nightingale Medical offers team-coordinated televisit medical and non-medical therapeutic sessions to patients seeking support for advanced illness symptom management and for those under hospice care. There are many issues pressing on patients and their families dealing with advanced illness and we are here to help with planning and symptom management where it is most helpful—in the home via televisit.. We believe healthcare should be safe, personal, convenient and economical. Our emphasis is on quality and wellbeing and we are open to engaging with both traditional and alternative medical treatments.

As a team comprised of a physician, chaplain, social worker, and nurse, we consult and coordinate a needs assessment for each special client patient before preparing a dynamic plan for individualized holistic support. That can also include integration with a patient’s existing physicians, specialists, clergy, and other providers. We dedicate our services to only 15 clients at a time who live in either Ulster or Dutchess Counties.

Schedule a Televisit Appointment

Personalized Palliative Care Services

Guided by your personal goals for care and quality of life, we partner with you to provide personalized symptom management support. And, we help families connect and engage, in-person and through video-conference.

Aligned with your unique goals of care and concerns, patients benefit from our team’s extensive toolkit of medical and non-medical services for highly effective symptom management and improved quality of life. Our team works with patients and their families to best understand diagnoses and advice from multiple physicians, to integrate a plethora of medications, and to offer complementary approaches proven effective for easing the experience of living with advanced illness. Symptoms to manage may include pain or despair, anxiety, insomnia, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, exhaustion, confusion, depression, and more. Depending upon need, we may include additional or different medication and/or complementary approaches including: interfaith spiritual care and meaning-making, healing arts such as yoga therapy, meditation, or breathwork, and/or support for preparation of important key documents and access to community resources. Support may involve facilitating family meetings in-home or through providing peace-of-mind connections via online video conferences.

Personal Needs Assessment

Along with the patient and family, our Palliative Care Team identifies what additional support might be beneficial and available. It may be medication management, healing arts, spiritual care, nutrition, medical equipment, companionship, or personal care. We determine whether or not important documentation has been completed and shared with key people; these may include Advanced Directives, Five Wishes, Living Wills, and MOLST forms. We create a dynamic plan and support you to achieve your quality of life and symptom management goals.

Spiritual Care & Healing Arts

Spiritual Care and Healing Arts such as yoga therapy, meditation, energy medicine, and aromatherapy for symptom management and well-being may be suggested.

Interfaith Spiritual Care and complementary healing arts modalities are highly effective in easing symptoms, helping to find meaning through the challenges of aging and illness, improving quality of life, and significantly enhancing spiritual/emotional/physical well-being. Offerings include interfaith spiritual care and healing arts such as yoga therapy, meditation, breathwork, sound therapy, energy medicine, and can recommend resources for music therapy, pet therapy, creative expression, massage therapy, and much more. Patients and families decide what support they would welcome and how often they want it scheduled.

Medical Marijuana Certification

In addition to traditional medication prescriptives, alternative forms of medication for symptom management are available to certifiable patients.

Medical Marijuana has proven to be highly effective in managing symptoms of pain, anxiety, nausea, and insomnia. Dr. Carpenter will take appointments in New Paltz to certify for medical marijuana but needs copies of medical records, in advance, attesting to the certifying medical conditions faxed prior to the appointment. Fax 845-259-1227.

Schedule an Appointment for Certification

What is Palliative Care?

Palliative care is a specialized holistic team approach for the care of patients who are living through serious advanced and life-threatening illnesses. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family. It focuses on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a serious illness—whatever the diagnosis. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness and can be provided along with curative treatment.

We believe that Palliative Care is best delivered as a team approach that cares for the body-mind-spirit or the whole person. The palliative care team includes a physician, interfaith spiritual care provider, a nurse, and a social worker who work together for the patient’s well-being in coordination with their other care providers, family, and friends. The palliative care team focuses on improving quality of life according to each patient’s goals of care, by alleviating suffering from pain, anxiety, insomnia, nausea, digestive disorders, spiritual despair, and other distressing symptoms. Of course, we include prescriptions of effective pharmaceutical medications as well as complementary healing arts modalities that may include Aromatherapy, Breathwork, Movement, Sound, Yoga Therapy, and Energy Medicine.

How is Palliative Care Different than Hospice Care?

Palliative Care is about treating pain and other distressing symptoms that are affecting a person’s quality of life. Palliative Care addresses symptoms and relieves suffering no matter where in the course of an illness and treatment one may be. A child born with certain conditions or person living with a chronic illness may require palliative care throughout all of their life. Unlike hospice which is called when there is a life expectancy of less than six months, palliative care is appropriate at any time, even if a full cure is anticipated.

Who Should Have Palliative Care?

Any person living with a serious advanced illness is appropriate for palliative care, including but not limited to patients with COPD (chronic bronchitis and emphysema), heart failure, cancer, dementia, ALS, strokes, and so many more.