Nagoya University · Medicine
Professor Yoshihisa Hirakawa's research lab focuses on long-term care, palliative care, and geriatric health services, with an emphasis on improving the quality of life for older adults in community and home-based settings. The lab investigates care coordination, advance care planning, and person-centered rehabilitation—particularly for frail, elderly, and dementia-affected individuals. Key research directions include the impact of non-pharmacological interventions such as home massage therapy, job satisfaction among home-care workers, and systemic barriers to effective end-of-life care. The lab employs qualitative and mixed-methods approaches to address challenges in integrated, community-based care delivery in Japan and beyond.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Objectives: To assess the effects of home massage rehabilitation therapy on the bed-ridden elderly. Design: Alternatively allocated trial. Setting: Subjects' homes, three home nursing stations, 13 visit care stations and one day service centre in Aichi prefecture, Japan. Subjects: Bed-ridden patients who were 65 years and above, no dementia, stable general condition, and receiving no rehabilitation therapy. Intervention: Thirty-minute sessions of home massage rehabilitation therapy by a massage
Advance care planning is considered an important issue in end-of-life care for older adults. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the healthcare system and end-of-life care tremendously. This review aimed to explore available articles on advance care planning amid the pandemic and analyze qualitatively. PubMed and Google Scholar were searched on February 2021 using the relevant keywords. Retrieved articles were screened applying inclusion criteria. Any article describing advance care pl
<b>Introduction:</b> High-quality, community-based dementia care requires a comprehensive, holistic approach. This study aimed to identify the barriers to achieving efficient cooperation and coordination among medical professionals, care managers, and medical social workers, and to improve the management model of community-based, integrated dementia care. <b>Methods:</b> We collected qualitative data through three focus group discussions at JA Konan Kosei Hospital. Thirteen participants (four di
The present qualitative study aims to shed light on the job satisfaction of home-visit care workers in Japan. A total of 19 participants were recruited from two rural, three suburban, and one urban area in and around Nagoya city. The qualitative data were collected through individual or group interviews from May to August of 2017. The interviews were conducted using an open-ended questionnaire concerning job satisfaction. Qualitative content analysis was used to systematically identify ideas and
Our study demonstrated that women with AMI who undergo PCI do not have a higher in-hospital mortality rate than men.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of morbidity worldwide. Patients with severe COPD often fail to receive adequate palliative care and are subject to undesired hospital transfers and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Although promoting advance care planning (ACP) in the community can help ensure the optimal delivery of palliative care for patients with COPD, the key challenges to routinely implementing ACP are not known. The aim of this study was to identify the percepti
<b>Objective:</b> The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of interprofessional case conferences on home-based end-of-life care to bridge perceptions gaps regarding ethical dilemmas among different healthcare professionals and analyze essential issues extracted the interprofessional discussions. <b>Patients and Methods:</b> The participants could spend only a limited amount of time after their working hours. Therefore, we shortened and simplified each of three case s
Successful advance care planning relies heavily on effective communication between the elderly and their families, care managers, and social workers. However, care managers and social workers are often not adequately prepared to conduct such discussion. The aim of the present study was to identify the specific challenges facing Japanese care managers and social workers when involvement in advance care planning. Two focus group discussions were held between August and November 2017, involving ele
A byproduct of the aging of the population has been a dramatic rise in patients with dementia. The aim of the present study is to clarify the use of aggressive and palliative treatments, artificial nutrition and sedation in long-term care hospitals in Japan. We assessed 123 deaths in people aged 65 and older who died in two long-term care hospitals in and around Nagoya from January 2001 to December 2002. All deceased were divided into two groups according to their diagnosis of dementia. Data on
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