Abstract
The issue of information disclosure may be taken up first as something that has undergone a drastic change in the recent medical service of Japan. In the field of cancer treatment, the common sense of the 1960s that ‘the patient is not notified of the diagnosis of cancer ’ has become a thing of the past. As for the disclosure of medical treatment records, it has come to be implemented at many hospitals since national hospitals throughout the country started to disclose such medical records in April 2001. Under such a situation, we tried to study ‘the way he information disclosure should be’ from a variety of viewpoints at this symposium.
The first is the viewpoint of medical record administrators who are in the position of administrating medical information. From the speech of the symposist, you can understand that the entry and storage of medical treatment records, essential conditions for disclosure still have many problems.
The second is the viewpoint from the psychiatric field where information disclosure has a direct influence on the treatment and from the perspective of AIDS treatment where the protection of patients' privacy is given top priority. What has come into light at this symposium is that the realities---complexity in schizophrenia (diagnosis notification rate being 20%) and protection of privacy of HIV patients are likely to cause the distrust of patients' families in the medical treatment.
The third is the viewpoint of nurses. In Japan it is not unusual that nursing records account for more than 80% of the total records produced. When considering such a situation, you will understand the importance of the nursing records.
The fourth is the viewpoint of the patients who have demanded disclosure. There are people who have experienced both the position of a journalist who has grappled with the information disclosure issue and the position of a patient with advanced cancer who has demanded disclosure.
We think it was a great harvest of this symposium to have had such people participate in this symposium. As the theme of the symposium is ‘the way information disclosure should be, ’ a very social issue, the presentations of the symposits and this summary are much different from normal medical papers. We ask you to be understanding of these differences arising from the special nature of the theme.
