The terms supportive, palliative and terminal care describe different aspects of helping people with cancer, and other serious illnesses. These three types of care often overlap, and many people get confused over exactly what they mean.

Supportive care helps people and their families to cope with cancer and its treatment and to continue with their lives as normally as possible. It should begin from the moment cancer is suspected, through diagnosis and treatment, and for as long afterwards as is necessary.

There are many sides to supportive care including:

• involving people in decisions about their treatment
• providing information
• symptom control
• dealing with the side effects of treatment
• social support
• rehabilitation after treatment
• emotional and spiritual support

Palliative care is based on relieving pain, and other symptoms, and on providing emotional and spiritual support for the patient and their family members. The aim is to help a person have the best quality of life possible. So in many ways the principles of palliative care are the same as those of supportive care. But while supportive care can be offered to people at any stage of their cancer, care is more likely to be described as palliative when a cure is not possible.

Even when it can't be cured, many people will live with cancer for years and lead a more or less normal life. From time to time they may have treatments, like radiotherapy or chemotherapy, to keep their condition under control. Palliative care works, alongside these ‘active’ treatments, to promote comfort and wellbeing.

Terminal care describes palliative care in the last few months, days or weeks of a person's life. During this time it is unlikely that there will be any active treatment for the cancer, and the focus will be on the person's comfort, and on giving support to their family.

The words ‘incurable’ and ‘terminal’ are sometimes used by people in the same way, but this is wrong. Someone who has incurable cancer may often live for many years, frequently leading a more or less normal life during that time, before they reach the terminal stage of their illness.