Objectives  To describe the current situation regarding the medical information provided for foreign residents by the official websites of cities and municipalities in Aichi Prefecture and to investigate associations between the characteristics of each city/municipality and their provision of online medical informationMethods  Using a checklist of 24 items, the official websites of all 54 cities and municipalities (hereafter local governments) in Aichi Prefecture were checked. Each item was descriptively summarized. Associations between three selected items and local government characteristics were analyzed by Fisher’s exact test.Results  The official websites of 49 local governments (90.7%) were translated into at least one foreign language. An automatic translation system was used by 43 websites (79.6%). Information on emergency medicine was translated into at least one foreign language on 45 websites (83.3%), child health checkups on 44 websites (81.5%), and adult health checkups on 42 websites (77.8%). However, only eight local governments (14.8%) provided information on where child health checkups were available, and 23 (42.6%) translated a list of medical facilities where adult health checkups were available. The provision of a link to the Aichi Medical Information System was significantly associated with the size of the local government and the number of foreigners. Ten (76.9%) out of 13 local governments categorized in the highest quartile for proportion of foreigners had not translated the list of medical facilities for adult health checkup.Conclusion  Many local governments rely on the automatic translation system, which does not have the capacity to manage all the information accurately. Compared to information on emergency care, access to information on child health checkups and adult health checkups, which will be increasingly needed in the future, was poor and limited. An external website for shared use was not fully utilized, in particular, by smaller local governments.

Palliative care team（PCT）, nutrition support team（NST）and office of nutrition in our hospital developed a special soup service, which was served for ten patients faced with terminal cancer. The members of PCT, NST and the Cook served a special soup to ten patients. Nine of them could taste the soup without vomiting although they had anorexia. It was a good result. The number of days from the last day tasting the soup to death or hospital transfer was between 3 and 20 days（12.5 days on average）, and the number of times they could taste the soup was between 1 and 3（2.0 times on average）. Tasting the soup supports the strength of living, and might bring an improvement in spiritual quality of life.

Recently, the palliative care team (PCT) at our hospital has included dentists. Among a total of 127 cancer patientsand required PCT intervention from 2009 to 2014, 17 patients (13.3%) had oral symptoms. Therefore, the PCT held discussions in order to determine the optimal way to treat each patient. Various symptoms, including oral pain, dry mouth, taste disturbance, furred tongue, excessive amounts of saliva, appetite loss, and trismus were treated by the dentists. As a result, the oral findings improved in all patients, while the oral symptoms improved in 16 of the 17 patients (94%). Thanks to the fact that dentists have joined the PCT, oral symptoms are effectively relieved, and PCT members now have an increased interest in oral cavity complications. Furthermore, conducting thorough examinations of the oral cavity by the PCT not only results in an improved QOL, but it has also increased the interest in the oral cavity on the part of the PCT. Therefore, more effective palliative care is expected to be achieved by promoting increased cooperation with more clinical departments.