Prognosis disclosure to terminally ill cancer patients: A qualitative study among Japanese physicians.

e20717 Background: Prognosis disclosure could facilitate end-of-life discussions and advance care planning in advanced cancer patients. However, many Japanese and Japanese American patients do not wish to know of their own prognosis, and physicians infrequently disclose terminal prognosis in Japan. We aimed to investigate Japanese physicians’ practice and emotion regarding prognosis disclosure. Methods: We adopted a qualitative design based on semi-structured interviews and content analysis. Attending physicians in a local cancer center were eligible if they had disclosed terminal prognosis to their cancer patients and/or families more than three times in the past year. The sample size was justified by recruiting participants through consistent comparison analysis until data saturation occurred. Results: We conducted 11 face-to-face interviews and detected the following categories; [practice in disclosure], [reasons for/against disclosure], and [emotion regarding disclosure]. [Practice] indicated that som...