Associate Professor,Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University*Profile is at the time of the award.
2020Inamori Research GrantsHumanities & Sociology
Everyone will eventually face aging, sickness, and death. We cannot change this fact, but we can change our own “consciousness” that determines how we face them.
Advance care planning (ACP) is a discussion about how to “live” with hope rather than despair over aging, sickness, and death. It is defined as “a process of discussing goals and preferences for future medical treatment and care with family and healthcare providers,” and its usefulness has been widely reported. However, many Japanese do not have the opportunity for ACP and reach their end-of-life (EOL) stage without sufficient discussion. This exacerbates not only the anguish of patients and their families at the EOL, but also the ethical dilemma of healthcare professionals. Efforts are required to address this challenging issue.
Thus, we developed tools to promote the healthy general public to think about their values and preferences for their future medical treatment/care at their EOL and conducted the ACP awareness programs utilizing these tools. As a result, participants increased interest in EOL/ACP and improved their readiness for ACP. Furthermore, approximately 90% of the subjects engaged in ACP discussions after participating in our program. These findings suggest that the ACP support tool we developed in our study has the feasibility and potential to be widely used in ACP promotion and awareness activities in Japan.
Humanities & Sociology
