著者

大塚 文

出版者

熊本大学

雑誌

先端倫理研究 : 熊本大学倫理学研究室紀要 (ISSN:18807879)

巻号頁・発行日

no.7, pp.76-93, 2013-03

---

These days the importance and respect for self-determination receive constant understanding in the healthcare environment, and one of its embodiments is informed consent (IC). When a patient wants to make some kind of decision by himself in the medical care, the patient demands communication including psychological, social, and economical (psychosocial) information, with healthcare workers -particularly doctors-, but in reality it is often found that communication with doctors is only concerned with medical related problems. Also in the social work practice, patient's self-determination is the root and trunk and MSWs' help begins by hearing enough about psychosocial situation of the patient in interviews. Understanding patients based on their psychosocial situation may support the IC between patients and other healthcare workers -particularly doctors. In other words MSWs understand a patient as a person, and as a specialist they supplement patients' self-determination. In this paper, I insisted upon the importance of the psychosocial understanding by confirming the process of the origin and the development of U.K, USA, and Japanese MSWs, and I described whether or not MSWs can contribute to patient's self-determination including IC.