We have started to hold regular conferences with patients on walking rounds in order to listen to their problems as much as possible and to make it easy to obtain informed consent from our patients. To sound our patients' opinions about our approach, we distributed questionnaires to a total of 332 patients between August and December 1994. The survey found the 103 patients joined the conferences for more than one week. Ninety-eight patients commented favorably foward the conferences and about 90% said that they have become able to reveal their thoughts and ask the physicians and nurse what they wanted to ask. A lotal of 82 patients said that they understood the purpose of their therapy, while 27 patients said that they had difficulty speaking to us at beside in the presence of other patients in the same room. With these results, we attained our purpose of sharing in their problems and making it easy to obtain informed consent. However, we feel a need to take measures to assure the privacy of the patients.