10th Annual Meeting DIA Japan 2013

In the traditional health care model it has been pointed out that health care professionals played a central role in providing medical care, which sometimes resulted in lack of communication among departments and lack of regard for patient needs. Thus, a new health care model “team medical care” is proposed in which health care professionals mutually cooperate each other and provide patient-centered care. In the patient-centered team medical care all medical professionals involved focus on patient-oriented care. At the same time a patient is expected to bear a responsibility as a team member. Doctors should not be the sole decision maker. It is desired that patients should be fully informed of his/her medical treatment and test by doctors and understand and agree to the content before making a decision on the appropriate medical treatment. In this session we reaffirm patient should be the key player in determining health care options in medical informed consent and discuss what the team medical care is from the viewpoint of health care professionals other than clinicians.