Consultation, Counseling and Support Service Center

Masaki Kato, Kayoko Miyata, Natsuko Moroi, Rieko Shimizu, Naoko Goto, Megumi Ohsuga, Mariko Shimizu, Yumiko Fujimaki, Natsumi Kanno, Tomoko Asayama, Miki Kamo, Emi Takeuchi

Introduction

The Consultation, Counseling and Support Service Center (CCSSC) deals with inquiries from patients, their families and citizens with variety of needs and concerns related to cancer. The total number of inquiries in 2016 was 12,283. The number of new cases was 6,759, of which there were 3,456 patients registered with the National Cancer Center Hospital (NCCH) (Table 1). We deal with various problems of cancer patients and their families with the ultimate goal of helping patients receive medical care and feel relieved.

Table 1. Number of cases (January - December, 2016)

Our team and what we do

We work as a multidisciplinary team with physicians, nurses, medical social workers, and clinical psychologist. We provide;

1.Consultation, Counseling and Support Services

Both face-to-face and telephone counseling are available. We willingly accept any inquiries related to cancer, such as cancer treatment, financial issues, social issues, and psychological issues. We also make effort to support several special cases such as job seeking and infertility issues. Since 2013, we have cooperated with "Hello Work Navigator", job-finding advisor, and Social Insurance Labor Consultants to help cancer patients find new jobs and we provide professional advice regarding compatibility of cancer treatment and work. In addition, we launched a hotline for young adult patients who are concerned with the impact of cancer treatment on fertility.

2.Group programs for patients and their families

3.Multidisciplinary team support beyond departments

4.Collaborative support with other hospitals and institutions

Research activities

The research about young cancer patients'fertility issues granted by a Health Labour Sciences Research Grant (H26-016) from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has been conducted.

Education

We lecture and act as facilitators in seminars for education of Cancer Counseling and Support Specialists.

Future prospects

We practice high quality cancer counseling and support, develop models and spread the results throughout the whole country.