1) Obstetrics medical education in Japan, Vietnam, Thailand was compared.The education differed according to the levels of knowledge and the techniques required for first-year doctors.In Japan and Vietnam, the importance of selfdirected learning was stressed in doctors' interviews.
2) The number of deliveries students attended was much higher among Vietnamese students than among Japanese students. Accordingly, Vietnamese students rated their obstetric knowledge and clinical skills more highly than did Japanese students.
3) The major challenges in Japanese medical education are to provide medical students with opportunities to participate in medical care as a member of a treatment team by introducing clinical clerkship training and to enable students to learn in a more self-directed manner.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, various studies have analyzed the concepts of “good death” and “quality of dying and death” in the world. The objective of this study was to compare community residents and physicians regarding their perceptions of “good death” in a terminal cancer setting in Fukushima, Japan.
METHODS: One thousand residents of Fukushima City (40 years or older) were randomly selected for comparison to the 483 physicians working in the same city. A self-administered questionnaire was used to query residents and physicians on 52 items about “good death.”
RESULTS: The response rate was 73.6% for the residents and 53.0% for the physicians. The concept of “good death” was composed of 14 factors for both groups. We elucidated the structure of the concept of “good death” in the general population and physicians in Japan, and only the third factor, “religion and spiritual beliefs, ” was the same between the general population and physician.
CONCLUSION: The data offers useful information pertaining to palliative care education for medical providers. Specifically, physicians should understand the differences between concepts held by the general population and physicians. For example, some same items were included in factor X (continuance of one's lifestyle) for citizen and factor II for physician. But contribution ratios of factor X for citizen and factor II for physician were different. This should lead to the better palliative care provision.

Introduction: Epidemiologic evidence on childhood vaccination is scarce in Japan. Our aim was to investigate the vaccination completion rate and risk factors of incomplete vaccination.
Methods:This study was a secondary analysis of the database developed for a childhood infection study of 2368 attendants of 18-month health checkups in one city in Japan. The data of vaccination history included bacillus Calmette-Guérin, diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, measles-rubella, and polio. A total of 1622 children were included in analyses after 746 were excluded because a large portion of their data was missing, and because their birthweight was <2500 g or their gestational age, <37 weeks.
Results:The overall vaccine completion rate was 79.3%. The factors significantly associated with incomplete vaccination by multivariate logistic analysis were two or more children living together, child care attendance, parents’ smoking habits and absence of exclusive breastfeeding at 4-month health checkups. As the number of risk factors for hospital admission due to infections increased, the vaccine completion rate tended to decrease.
Conclusion:Families with children who attend child care facilities and with two or more other children should be provided with more information regarding vaccination and positive health behaviors in general.

 This cross-sectional study examined cigarette smoking knowledge, attitudes, and practices among medical students in a southwestern region of China. The subjects included 557 and 223 first and fourth year Chinese medical students, respectively. Comparison data were collected from 74 Japanese and 90 Vietnamese fourth year medical students. The smoking rate among the fourth year medical students in China (7.0%) was significantly higher than among the first year medical students (2.8%), and higher than among the medical students from Vietnam, but lower than the medical students from Japan. The fourth year Chinese students had a more permissive attitude toward cigarette smoking by physicians compared with the first year students, and the lowest knowledge base on cigarette smoking-related diseases among the students from all three countries. Based on a multivariate analysis, the factors associated with cigarette smoking were male gender, having friends who smoked, and exhibiting a permissive attitude toward smoking. Implementations aimed at improving tobacco education and addressing the gender differences and peer influences related to cigarette smoking are needed to improve Chinese medical students’ knowledge and attitudes about cigarette smoking, and to prevent students from starting to smoke cigarettes.