Say you’re having major surgery, like installing some new ribs, and half way through the surgery, while your chest is wide open, the surgeon just leaves. Like he just decides to go home and leave you there.
Eventually you’ll wake up, right? You’ll wake up with your chest open, probably in a lot of pain.
Would you die? If you manage to stay calm and just lie there patiently, how long could you survive? Besides something like an infection, what would be the things that could kill you in that situation?
Palliative just means relieving symptoms without dealing with the cause of the condition. In this example they might administer medication to lower a spiking heart rate without dealing with the obvious causal factor of the unfinished surgery bc they are not qualified to do so. This would be palliative in nature.
That said “palliative care” is a sub speciality in its own right as you describe