For a patient who wishes to take palliative care at the Shizuoka Cancer Center

What Is Palliative Care?

Palliative care is a treatment and care to alleviate physical or mental agony of each patient who has a severe illness and each one of his/her family members, so that they all can have more fulfilling lives.

What Should I Do to Take Palliative Care?

• At the outpatient clinic in the Division of Palliative Medicine, we provide a treatment to relieve such unbearable symptoms as aching pains. You will need to have a Letter of Introduction issued by your current primary doctor. Please go to your doctor if you are already a patient at the Shizuoka Cancer Center. If you are a patient at another medical institution, ask your doctor there or the office for the regional referrals to issue one.
• For more information, call 055-989-5559 (in Japanese only), the Palliative Care Center, the Shizuoka Cancer Center.

What Should I Do to Be Admitted to the Palliative Care Ward?

You Are a Patient (either an outpatient or an inpatient) at Another Medical Institution:

• You should have an initial consultation meeting with a doctor and a nurse at the outpatient clinic at the Division of Palliative Medicine in the Shizuoka Cancer Center.
• Please ask your primary doctor at the current medical institution to make an appointment for the above-mentioned meeting.
• The request for the appointment should be made through the medical institution you are currently going to or being hospitalized in.
• Your current primary doctor should prepare the required document providing detailed medical information and send it to the Patient Referral Office at the Shizuoka Cancer Center via fax at 055-989-5623.
• The staff at the Patient Referral Office will let your doctor know when you are scheduled to have the meeting. The information including date and time will be forwarded to you.
• It will take around 2 weeks until you have the consultation meeting after making the request, and 2 or 3 weeks until you are admitted to the palliative care ward at the Shizuoka Cancer Center after the meeting. Until then, you are supposed to be continuing the treatment at the current medical institution.
• In case you are not feeling well enough to come to the Shizuoka Cancer Center to have the above-mentioned meeting as an outpatient, your family can take it on behalf of you. The Letter of Consent signed by yourself will be needed and will have to be faxed to the Patient Referral Office via fax beforehand.

The fee for the above-mentioned meeting will be the same as for a regular medical consultation, but in case the family comes on behalf of you, Yen 5,400 will be charged.

You Are a Patient (either an outpatient or an inpatient) at the Shizuoka Cancer Center:

• You should apply for admission to the palliative care ward. Please tell your primary doctor that you wish to be admitted there.
• In case you are being hospitalized at the general ward, you and your family should discuss with a nurse from the palliative care ward and decide on the meeting date. A doctor with the nurse is coming down from the Division of Palliative Medicine to the general ward to have a meeting with you and your family on that day.
• Doctors and other medical staff at the Division of Palliative Medicine will discuss on whether you should be transferred to the palliative care ward or not. When the discussion result turns out to be positive, you will be officially listed for admission.
• It usually takes 1 or 2 weeks to get the meeting date fixed. After you are officially listed for admission, you will have to wait for 2 or 3 weeks before being transferred to the palliative care ward.
• You will not be able to have a meeting with the staff from the Division of Palliative Medicine asking for the application for admission at the general outpatient clinic. However, the medical staff there can give you the briefing about what should be done for the application. Please tell your primary doctor that you wish to be admitted to the palliative care ward.
• For more information, you can visit the Patient and Family Support Center at the window No.5 or call 055-989-5559 (in Japanese only).

What is the difference between palliative care and supportive care?

• Supportive care is a treatment or medical care and prevention for side effects and complications from anti-cancer drug therapy (chemotherapy), radiation therapy or surgery. At the Shizuoka Cancer Center, doctors as well as other medical staff specializing in supportive care are providing the treatment and care at the Supportive Care Center.
• Palliative care, on the other hand, is for alleviating any physical and mental pains regardless of patient’s cancer treatment including surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. In addition to the patient him/herself, the family’s agony is also taken care of.

At the Shizuoka Cancer Center, all the medical staff are supposed to be providing basic palliative care. When the patient’s problems seem difficult or complicating beyond their basic care, doctors, nurses and psychotherapists at the Palliative Care Center will come in for help.