Sure. The professor may have more to add, or corrections to make, to my response.
We take a broader view of palliative care in that we really believe it needs to begin as soon as someone is diagnosed with a critical illness. Palliative care is the care that's focused on and preoccupied with the patient's quality of life, and quality-of-life issues emerge the moment someone is diagnosed with a critical illness. From that moment, they have to start dealing with a great deal of uncertainty. They need to be engaged in planning their treatment. There may well be symptoms to manage as a result of early treatment. Of course, these issues become more pressing the closer you come to end of life, because the time that you have is sacred and those challenges are pressing in on you.
More specifically, palliative care is delivered by a team. It is not delivered by a single specialist. That team could include a palliative care specialist. It potentially could include a family physician, a psychologist, a nurse, a support care worker. All of these people need to be working from the same playbook in terms of the choices the patient has made in terms of their care planning.
The team really focuses on three things. The first is pain and symptom management, which gets very complex, as people know, with a variety of medications and treatments going on. The second is psychological and emotional support. We all know, with the mental health awareness week that's just happened, what an interaction there is between mental and physical health. The final piece that we like to emphasize is engagement of the patient in key decisions, including the location of care. That means patients having the option to receive care in the community or at home when that's medically feasible, which is also usually more affordable for the system.