title: [Cancer treatment and death studies].
abstract: In the West, death studies has become a new academic area since around 1970. The driving force is the hospice movement. People now ask questions such as how to care for dying people and their relatives. Because the main clients in hospice and palliative care are cancer patients, cancer treatment and death studies are closely linked to each other. The rise of death studies is connected with the awareness of the limits of modern medicine. Medical staffs are forced to learn how to care for those patients facing death. But modern medicine has put exclusive emphasis on biomedical treatment to cure. Contemporary medicine is becoming more and more aware of the psychological and spiritual needs of the patient. Today medicine and medical education have to incorporate the perspectives from death studies, learning how human beings facing death can live a better life not only in physical terms but also in psychological, social and spiritual terms.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Susumu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shimazono
mesh_terms: D001293:Attitude to Death; D017051:Hospice Care / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D010166:Palliative Care / Q000523:psychology; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D013795:Thanatology