Supportive Care Center

Koichi Goto

Introduction

Our Department was established as an organization to provide, in addition to conventional consultation support, positive and comprehensive support from a variety of professional occupations for actual or potential, physical, mental, and social problems that cancer patients and their families have to confront. The main activities are establishment of a continuous support system for patients and families, enhancement of a home care support system, and promotion of community cooperation for establishing early palliative care.

Routine activities

Consultation support/community medicine cooperation

In 2015, we received 5,179 new consultations. Among them, 4,151 (80.2%) were from patients who had received medical treatment from our hospital, or their families, and 1,028 (20.6%) were from patients who had received medical treatment at other medical institutions, or their families, or local medical welfare workers (Table 1).

In this year, to improve QOL during cancer treatment, we started new educational services for cancer patients such as an oral care program, a skin and nail care program, and a physical rehabilitation program. We provide these new additional services taking into account the difficulties faced by patients.

The new building, which is named NEXT, for enlarged operating and endoscopic rooms is under construction in our hospital. Therefore, to acquire more new patients, we have started new case conferences held in communities in order to build face-to-face relationships between the physicians of our hospital and local physicians.

Continuous nursing support

For outpatients, we provide continuous nursing support. In 2015, we provided continuous support and consultation services to about 2,600 patients, mainly in the areas of thoracic and gastrointestinal oncology.

In order to promote self-care by inpatients and/or their families, as well as to secure appropriate social resources, we provide medical and social support with a view to home care even from an early time of hospitalization. We carried out a screening program for about 2,250 patients who needed social support and provided them with appropriate support.

In order to sustain seamless medical and social support, we strengthen cooperation with home-visit nursing stations to deal with the problems faced by home care patients and/or their families, mainly related to medical management. In 2015, we carried out interventions such as approximately 1,030 phone-calls and face-to-face consultations.