[End-of-Life Care at Nursing Facilities]

In Japan, it has been more common for elderly people to die in a hospital than at home. However, recently, increasingly more elderly people want to die where they have been living for a long time, such as their homes or nursing care facilities. We have been visiting patients at various types of nursing care facilities for ten years, including terminal care services followed by confirming death for 152 patients. Our study showed that 87 patients died of old age, which was the top cause of death. We also found that nursing care facilities, where nurses work full-time, provided terminal care for the greatest number of residents, which was 124 patients. The average period between admission to a facility and death was 3 years 3 months. The number of patients who receive terminal nursing care at a facility is increasing annually. The number of elderly people who die at home or a nursing care facility, rather than a hospital, will keep increasing in the near future.