[What patients expect from home hospice medicine]

Over 60% of men and women with terminal illness wish for providing hospice care at home. The goal of hospice is to enhance the quality of life through relief of physical, emotional, social and spiritual pain. Hospice must be accepted by patients and family when their illness is without cure and hospice medicine is palliative. Providing patients with truthful information about their illness is essential for patients to control in determining how best to spend the remaining lives. Above described conditions allow patients choice, "informed choice". However as for Japanese concern, it is not yet sufficient enough about providing the patients and family what hospice medicine means with truthful information about illness. Therefore, the urgent needs enforce us to ask the questionnaire to let them understanding what is hospice medicine about and providing the patient and family with maximum self-determination. The results indicated that the most of men and women are expecting to exercise self-determination rights (over 80%) with their appropriate information to choice the specialized program of hospice medicine.