Psychological process from hospitalization to death among uninformed terminal liver cancer patients in Japan 英文参考文献.docVIP

BMC Palliative Care BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Psychological process from hospitalization to death among uninformed terminal liver cancer patients in Japan Yuko Maeda*1, Akihito Hagihara2, Eiko Kobori1 and Takeo Nakayama1 Address: 1Kyoto University School of Public Health, Kyoto, Japan and 2Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Email: Yuko Maeda* - maeda@path1.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp; Akihito Hagihara - hagihara@hsmp.med.kyushu-u.ac.jp; Eiko Kobori - kobori@pbh.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp; Takeo Nakayama - nakayama@pbh.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp * Corresponding author Published: 04 September 2006 Received: 01 December 2005 Accepted: 04 September 2006 BMC Palliative Care 2006, 5:6 doi:10.1186/1472-684X-5-6 This article is available from: /1472-684X/5/6 ? 2006 Maeda et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Although the attitude among doctors toward disclosing a cancer diagnosis is becoming more positive, informing patients of their disease has not yet become a common practice in Japan. We examined the psychological process, from hospitalization until death, among uninformed terminal cancer patients in Japan, and developed a psychological model. Methods: Terminal cancer patients hospitalized during the recruiting period voluntarily participated in in-depth interviews. The data were analyzed by grounded theory. Results: Of the 87 uninformed participants at the time of hospitalization, 67% (N = 59) died without being informed of their diagnosis. All were male, 51–66 years of age, and all experienced five psychological stages: anxiety and puzzlement, suspicion and denial, certainty, preparation, and acceptance. At