“Relieving patients from the symptoms of disease, as well as treating any side affects of treatment, involves a broad range of concerns, starting with treating physical symptoms such as pain, nausea and breathlessness. The palliative care teams have become very skillful in prescribing drugs for physical symptoms, and have been instrumental in showing how drugs such as morphine can be used safely while maintaining a patient's full faculties and function. Usually, a palliative care patient's concerns are pain, fears about the future, loss of independence, worries about their family, and feeling like a burden.”

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliative_care#Dealing_with_distress