Palliative care focuses on reducing the severity of disease symptoms in order to prevent and relieve suffering and to improve the quality of life for people facing serious, complex illness. Primary care providers are often the coordinators of palliative care and need to be well versed in all aspects of providing palliative care. This issue covers important topics in palliative care, such as prognosis, management of several end-stage diseases, and management of severe symptoms. The issue could be helpful to a physician studying for subspecialty certification in hospice and palliative medicine.

This issue of Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice, guest edited by Drs. Alan R. Roth, Peter A. Selwyn, and Serife Eti, is devoted to Palliative Care. Articles in this important issue include: Introduction to Hospice and Palliative Care; Hospice for the Primary Care Physician; Pain Assessment and Management; Non-Pain Symptom Management; Communication Skills: Delivering Bad News, Conducting a Goals of Care Family Meeting, and Advance Care Planning; Psychosocial Issues and Bereavement; Ethical and Legal Considerations in End of Life Care; Cultural, Religious, and Spiritual Issues in Palliative Care; Palliative Care Approach to Chronic Diseases (CHF/COPD/ESLD/ESRD); Palliative Care in HIV/AIDS; Palliative Care in the Elderly (Dementia, Neurodegenerative Disorders, Functional Decline/Frailty); and Pediatric Palliative Care.