Abstract
A postgraduate hospital pharmacy course student of Kobe Pharmaceutical University who was undergoing internship training in the palliative care ward of Rokko hospital interviewed patients to obtain information about any unproven therapies which they had used. Most patients indicated a strong desire to obtain sufficient information about palliative care. They also emphasized the need for candid discussions with their physician regarding both conventional and unproven therapies.
In cancer therapy, a large number of patients may use either unproven therapies orcomplementary/alternative medicine without consulting their physicians and, as a result, they do not receive appropriate medical information on the therapy in question. A number of reports have attempted, using questionnaires, to clarify the perceptions of unproven therapies. These reports describe the current situation of unproven therapies in cancer patients en masse, but fail to clarify the perceptions, motivations or evaluations of individual patients. Therefore, thepostgraduate course student interviewed each patient who had used such unproven therapies to clarify the individual situation.
Patients welcomed pharmacists who provided detailed drug information. Patients whodiscovered information on unproven therapies through their own experimentation seemed toobtain a positive sense of their spiritual ability to confront their lillness. It is clear that patients expect pharmacists to support them more by discussing their drug therapy and providing relevant information whenever possible.
