Dementia Japan33:154-165, 2019

Attempt to confirm living will of nursing home residents concerning end-of-life care and treatment:encouraging patient-driven decision making

Noriko Sakurai, Sumie Fukai, Rieko Kaneko, Matue Tatuno

JA NAGANO Group Special Nursing Home, Roman UEDA

Upon facing the increasing end-of-life instances of severe dementia patients, especially at Intensive nursing homes for the Elderly, one of the unmet needs for caregivers is to confirm the will of patients.
Here we show our 17 years of attempts on end-of-life care support program.
Whether to start tube feeding (either gastrostomy or nasogastric tube) is a difficult decision to make that has tended to be decided rather by families than by patients themselves in Japan.
In 2018, all the care home residents (average age 89, average care level 4.0/5.0) were asked their preference on care and treatment, and 75 percent of them managed to admit their will verbally or by finger-pointing.

Address correspondence to Ns. Noriko Sakurai, JA NAGANO Group Special Nursing Home, Roman UEDA (250-1 Tonoshiro, Ueda-shi, Nagano 386-0004, Japan)