Journal of Palliative Care & Medicine
Open Access

Review Article

Surgical Resident Education for Pain Management in Cancer Patient - A Result of an Institutional Experience in Japan

¹Department of Gastroenterological Surgery (Surgery II), Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65, Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 466-8550, Japan

²Palliative care Division, National Cancer Research Center Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

³xPalliative care Division, Seirei Sakra citizen hospital, Chiba, Japan

⁴Palliative care Division, Tokyo Metropolitan Cancer and Infectious diseases Center Komagome Hospital, Tokyo, Japan

*Corresponding Author:

Hisaharu Oya
Department of Gastroenterological Surgery (Surgery II)
Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine
65, Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku
Nagoya, Aichi 466-8550, Japan
Tel: +81-52-744-2249
Fax: +81-52-744-2111
E-mail: u4946008@yahoo.co.jp

Received date: July 29, 2013; Accepted date: August 26, 2013; Published date: August 30, 2013

Citation: Oya H, Matoba M, Murakami S, Maeda T, Koike M, et al. (2013) Surgical Resident Education for Pain Management in Cancer Patient - A Result of an Institutional Experience in Japan. J Palliative Care Med 3:156. doi: 10.4172/2165-7386.1000156

Copyright: © 2013 Oya H, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Although an increasing number of Japanese hospitals have established palliative care departments, the provision of palliative care in the current health care system is insufficient. In 2012, 2.6% of all Japanese hospitals had a palliative medicine unit. Additionally, in 2008, only 2.3% of hospitals had a palliative medicine unit with specialists in palliative medicine, and only 4.2% of hospitals, which had teams of palliative medicine specialists and palliative medicine units, were deemed cancer care hospitals. Specifically, in many hospitals, specialists in non-palliative care treat numerous symptoms in oncology patients. Palliative care is an essential part of integrated oncology treatment. According to a survey of certified oncologists regarding palliative care, knowledge pertaining to palliative medicine and its requisite skills are necessary for oncologists. Several societies have carried out educational programs pertaining to palliative care for lay people. Furthermore, a Japanese organization, The Japanese Society of Palliative Medicine, has launched a program on symptom management called the Palliative Care Emphasis and a project called the Assessment for Continuous Medical Education for trainers, as well as regular seminars using an integrated curriculum for medical students and primary staff in oncology. However, for physicians in training, the requirement and development of a primary palliative medicine skill set has not yet been well established. Therefore, given the increasing attention to these concerns, since 2009, all surgical residents in the palliative care department of National Cancer Center in Tokyo have been involved in a mandatory one-month training session that we conducted. For this article, we performed a review regarding physician education in palliative care in Japan over the recent years and we considered palliative care training including management of pain for surgical residents

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