“Palliative care is a growing field, but it remains difficult to find a lot of evidence on how to effectively manage patients' symptoms,” says Dr. Romayne Gallagher. She is the Physician Program Director for Providence Health Care’s Residential Program, Program Director for Palliative Care, and an active clinician.

During her work with palliative care patients, she says, it’s not uncommon to come across rare conditions or situations where conventional therapies are not successful.

“Palliative care is still a relatively new field,” Dr. Gallagher explains.  Originating as a way to meet the physical, spiritual, and psychological needs of terminal patients, palliative care has evolved over the past fifteen years to encompass managing the pain, nausea, fatigue and anxiety associated with many chronic diseases, not just those associated with end-of-life care.

Being able to research novel approaches to pain and symptom management through the Electronic Health Library of British Columbia (e-HLbc) has helped Dr. Gallagher give her patients more options to tackle their  symptoms.

“We had a patient who was recovering from surgery for bowel cancer. Since his surgery, he was unable to get his bowels moving again; a painful side effect of the treatment.” Through e-HLbc, Dr. Gallagher was able to identify novel approaches to kick-start his bowels.

“I was able to search the journals, case reports, and grey literature for more options. There’s an amazing amount of data we have access to through e-HLbc.” She located case reports of two medications that were shown to have helped. “I was able to go to the patient with the information I had and give him options. He said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’”

“After more than 20 years as a physician, some times I’ve tried everything I know, so I have to see what else is out there that might work.”

Dr. Romayne Gallagher, M.D.
Physician Program Director, Providence Health's Residential and Palliative Care programs