The Palliative Care Handbook: A Practical, Evidence-Based Guide to Serious Illness Care for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals

Palliative and hospice care is delivered, hour by hour, by nurses and allied health professionals — not by a chart note written once a week. The Palliative Care Handbook was written for exactly that audience: the nurses, hospice aides, social workers, chaplains, and therapists who sit at the bedside at two in the morning and are asked questions no other textbook fully answers.

Across twelve practical chapters, this handbook covers the full scope of serious illness care: the philosophy and history of palliative care and how it differs from hospice; structured, evidence-based communication for breaking bad news and running goals-of-care conversations; comprehensive pain assessment and opioid management, including special populations and opioid rotation; management of dyspnea, nausea, delirium, and other non-pain symptoms; the psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions of serious illness; disease-specific trajectories in cancer, heart failure, COPD, dementia, and kidney failure; pediatric and perinatal palliative care; advance care planning, ethics, and the law; hospice levels of care and eligibility; the active dying phase; grief, bereavement, and clinician self-care; and cultural competence across diverse patient populations.

Every chapter follows the same practical structure: core content grounded in current guidelines (WHO, NCCN, NHPCO/CMS), an integrative case study drawn from real clinical scenarios, a hands-on Practice Deep Dive, a list of common pitfalls, a quick-reference table for point-of-care use, and self-assessment questions with answers for review.

Whether you are a nursing student preparing for hospice and palliative care certification, a bedside nurse building clinical confidence, or an experienced hospice team member looking for a reliable point-of-care reference, this handbook is designed to be practical enough to open on a night shift and rigorous enough to trust.