[The influence of family willingness to home palliative care]

In the current state of medical treatment, cancer patients discharged from hospital to home have been increasing. For enforcement of home palliative care, we think that family willingness to care for the patient is very important. We examined how much the willingness of a family to care for the patient influences the enforcement of home palliative care and the factors that influence the willingness of care given by the family. When the family willingness to care for the patient was low, there were significantly lower patient deaths at home. Meanwhile, the length of home care was also significantly short. In fact, there was a tendency to influence the outcome of home palliative care by increasing the willingness to care for the patient by the family when the number of caregivers was high, additional medical treatment given to the patient and a good QOL at the time of discharge. Based on the STAS evaluation result, the willingness to care for the patient by the family was significantly higher when anxiety between the patient and his family is low, understanding of the state of the disease is good and communication between the patient and the family is good. We thought that the willingness to care for the patient provided by the family influences greatly in order to enforce home palliative care to be successful. We also thought that it is important to provide appropriate information to the patient and his family, and to resolve individual patients' problems as well.