Integrated pain and palliative medicine model

Pain and symptom management are the essence of palliative care (1). Good and easily accessible pain management and palliative care are conceptually so analogous that there is a rising call to address them together. Both of them targets reduction of suffering, restoring function and improving quality of life (QOL) (2). Integrated pain and palliative medicine can therefore be a novel contribution or ‘a way of dignified life and death in patients suffering from chronic and life-threatening diseases’ of healthcare system to the mankind. The purpose of this review is to ponder upon the need, logistics, advantages, barriers and recommendations for integration of pain and palliative medicine and to propose an ‘Integrated pain-palliative medicine’ (IPPM) model