3 days in 1 - or so it felt!

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Hi again and sorry for a delay in getting anything back on Thursday, it was an extremely long but productive day with numerous commutes across the city by metro and taxi– we left the hotel at 08.30 with Mimi (and then were joined en route by Sami (our translator for the next 4 days) and took several metro trains to a hospice to the east of the city (St John’s). Spent and hour there with a lovely doctor who showed us around and explained her work and the long history of the hospice. After a quick lunch in the local hospital’s outpatient department we then took a taxi to visit a palliative care team in the community (Care Town Kodaira Clinic) headed up by a Dr Yamizake who is pretty famous in Japan for his pioneering work in end of Life care (he wrote a book in the 80’s challenging the state of end of life care in hospitals which sold 750,000 copies and was then made into a movie). We then dashed off via several metros to central Tokyo to a swanky publishing firm where we met the editors of a journal for nurses working in the acute hospital (Igaku-Shoin publishers – oldest publishers in Japan of medical journals and books – establishd in 1882 by the great grandfather of the current president). With 5 minutes to spare we were briefed that Dr Yamizake and 2 other health care professionals would be joining us and our remit was to spend 2 hours debating the current state of end of life care in Japan, draw on our experiences of the UK system and suggest solutions for change within Japan – the debate was recorded and will be published as the editorial of this journal when it goes our next January! With a few whispered exchanges between Tricia and I, a plan of discussion was hastily assembled and for 2 hours we discussed End of Life Care in the UK and Japan with 2 digital recorders capturing our every word and a hovering photographer firing off dozens of photos every time we spoke! Dr Yamizake (who had been briefing the Ministry of Health and Labour on this very topic, and who it transpires has travelled the world exploring other models of care and met everyone there is to meet including Dame Cecily Saunders, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and Mother Theresa) was very patient and took a few notes. We were then taken off to a an Italian restaurant for supper and managed a return to the hotel by 11pm feeling exhausted but relieved that we had held our own with little/no notice before a fairly significant meeting and really enjoyed the day and learnt heaps and maybe, a very small maybe, added something useful to the way end of life care is delivered in Japan under the influence of Dr Yamizake! Tomorrow a day of sightseeing and planning our seminar presentations for the weekend!

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