1. Introduction
Whether it would be more appropriate for nursing
home residents to receive end-of-life (EOL) care within the
facility or to be transferred to hospitals depends on the
resident’s medical needs, the availability and capacity of
the nursing home to provide EOL care, and the extent to
which the resident and the family prefer to receive life sustaining
treatment (LST) [1–3]. In Japan, the proportion of
deaths that occur in nursing homes is 3.2% [4,5], which is
disproportionally low when compared with 33.5% (2003)
in the Netherlands and 21.7% (2007) in the United States