Preference of place for end-of-life cancer care and death among bereaved Japanese families who experienced home hospice care and death of a loved one

Abstract

Home hospice services need to be developed in Japan so that family support programs can be initiated early enough to support the family burden of household maintenance and caring for the patient. Quality improvement of home hospice services will support patients and families through end-of-life care and facilitate a good death at home.

Associations with the Japanese Population's Preferences for the Place of End-of-Life Care and Their Need for Receiving Health Care Services

“…6 Preferences for place of care are reportedly influenced by having experienced the home palliative care and death of a loved one. 34 This result might show a possible way to increase the number of people who die at home by reaching out to the people who have experienced bereavement care at home. Therefore, it is important to improve health care services and to provide the public with more information about them.…”

Determinants of Preference for Home Death Among Terminally Ill Patients With Cancer in Taiwan

“…Dying at home is preferred by a significant percentage of terminally ill patients with cancer worldwide (31%Y87%, with most studies showing 950%; Gomes, Calanzani, Gysels, Hall, & Higginson, 2013), caregivers (25%Y68%; Choi et al, 2010;Gomes et al, 2013), and the general public (49%Y84%; Gomes et al, 2012Gomes et al, , 2013. However, home is not always the best place of death because this option requires adequate facilities to meet the dying person's needs, persons able to provide end-of-life care, and healthcare system resources (Gomes & Higginson, 2008).…”

“…However, current knowledge about the factors correlated with the actual place of death of patients with cancer (AlonsoBabarro et al, 2011;Murray, Fiset, Young, & Kryworuchko, 2009) is more extensive than that about the factors associated with their preferred place of death (Gomes et al, 2012). Only three studies have explored preferred place of death among Asian populations (Choi et al, 2010(Choi et al, , 2005Yamagishi et al, 2012), the social and cultural factors as well as healthcare systems of which differ significantly from those in Western countries.…”

“…Of these Asian studies investigating the place-of-death preferences of patients with cancer, one study (Choi et al, 2010) examined this issue from the perspective of bereaved family members, and the other two studies (Choi et al, 2005;Yamagishi et al, 2012) explored preferred place of death from the perspective of patients with cancer at various, not necessarily terminal, stages of their illness. Patient preferences for place of death may change in response to deterioration of his or her physical condition and exhaustion of family resources as death approaches.…”

Making the Decision for Home Hospice: Perspectives of Bereaved Japanese Families who had Loved Ones in Home Hospice

“…Patient choice of where to die is closely related to the quality of end-of-life care and good death (6). Thus, the location of a patient's death is affected by the patient's own desires, attitudes toward death, emotional and physical burdens of the patient and family, resources available in the community and the quality of home hospice (7).…”