Palliative Care Team Experiences and Future Challenges for Non-cancer Patients: A Report from Osaka Rosai Hospital

ABSTRACT

In Japan, palliative care has mainly involved patients with cancer. However, palliative care should be provided for patients with other diseases. In addition, the need for palliative care for patients with medical conditions other than cancer is expected to increase with the aging population. Few reports have been published regarding palliative care team activity for patients with other medical conditions in Japan; accordingly, we meticulously scrutinized our team activity records and identified 64 cases from April 2019 to March 2023 in Osaka Rosai Hospital with 678 beds: the number of consultations, durations of interventions, patients’ demographics, request details, reactions from clients, and requests for interprofessional conference participations. Consequently, 42 cases out of all 64 cases, cardiology was the most common department and dyspnea, pain, and fatigue were frequently requested symptoms. The most frequent issue of interprofessional conferences was about continuous sedation. We recognized the need for timely publicity, easy access to the palliative team, success experiences of clients, and study groups to learn non-cancer diseases for penetration of palliative care activity.