The Social Construction of the "Problem" of Disclosure of Information in Modern Medicine

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In this study, we survey and examine the disclosure of medical information in Japan. In 1998, the Ministry of Health and Welfare put the Act for Disclosure of Medical Documents on the table, which Japan Medical Association opposed. Although the Act wasn't born, the current of disclosure has been strengthened. We sent out questionnaires to doctors, nurses and citizens in Shiga Prefecture and interviewed some of them. As results, we got some findings ; 1)Doctors accept their patients' requests for the disclosure of medical records on the one hand but have anxiety for the declining of D-P relationships ; 2)Nurses seem more eagerly to defense the rights of their patients to know than Doctors, but they resist to disclosure of their record because they feel a lot of stresses originated from wishes to make perfect nursing documents ; 3)Citizens think that they need quite plain and intelligible explanation from their doctors. They still respect the authority and speciality of the doctor. As a consequence, we suggest that it's better to hand out medical cards to each patients than to wait for their requests from now forth as a procedure of disclosure.