Palliative Care in Kamogawa City, Japan

Annals of Long-Term Care is pleased to bring readers expert commentaries and podcasts through a new alliance with GeriPal, an online community of interdisciplinary providers interested in geriatrics or palliative care, featuring content written and curated by and for leading geriatricians in the field. 

For this week's GeriPal podcast we talk with Sandra Moody, MD, about her experiences in geriatrics and palliative care in Kamogawa City, Japan.  Sandra helped to start the hospice and palliative care service at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center prior to moving to Japan.  We spoke with Sandra about differences between geriatrics and palliative care as practiced in the US vs. Japan.

Key excerpts from the transcript below:

• Japan Geriatric Society, and other similar Gerontology and Geriatric organizations were established [in Japan] even before the U.S. I thought they had a lot of clinical services, but they don't. They had 20 to 30, they may have more now, departments of Geriatrics and Gerontology, but they were really research programs, and not clinical programs. 
• Palliative Care has been around since probably 1981 ... first Palliative Care Unit, they say. Palliative Care is for those with cancer diagnosis only.
• Palliative Care in Japan equals Hospice care. The doctors that I'm working with are saying Palliative Care, but we're thinking different things, and over time I realized, "Oh, this is Hospice Care."
• This opening up to Palliative end of life care to everybody, probably will be another 10 to 20 years. Things happen slower there, and I think it's because of decisions are made by consensus. [In the US] we say, "This is the way it is, and we just get going with it." And things start happening, and changing. It doesn't happen that way [in Japan]. So, [in Japan] it's more consensus, so things can be very slow before they get to where they want it to be.

Links:

• Kameda Hospital
• Economist: What People Want at the End of Life

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Read the Transcript of the Podcast here



transcript edited by: Sean Lang-Brown

by: Alex Smith