Abstract
With the rapid improvement of science and technology in recent years, Japanese hospitals are increasingly employing high-technology equipment.This gives rise to such issues as the necessity of obtaining informed consent and the quality of life in the hospital environment and is taking place against a background of increasing self-assertiveness on the part of health-care clients.There is a necessity for increased self-management and medical understanding on the part of health clients. Self-care is an important factor in effective care as well as an aid to the effectiveness of nurses. However, given the sociocultural context within which health care is delivered in Japan, issues such as "informed consent" and "quality of life" encounter obstacles as soon as they are raised. In this sociocultural context, the very fact of being "committed" to a hospital engenders a sense of fatalism and pessimistic expectations on the part of the patient. Moreover, patients in this cultural context are willing to surrender responsibility for their lives to medical staff members, while doctors and nurses have reciprocal expectations. In this symposium we argue that is necessary to focus on these problems from the perspectives of both the therapeutic and health care communities.
