Buddhist Priests’ Traditional Activity as a De Facto Community Outreach for Older People with Various Challenges: A Mixed Methods Approach

Abstract

Little is known about monthly home visits, a traditional Japanese Buddhist custom, wherein Buddhist priests visit their parishioners’ homes every month. This study aimed to explore this custom in terms of community health care. Qualitative data were collected from 14 Buddhist priests from various areas, followed by quantitative data collection on all the temples in the Osaka parish, where 486 questionnaires were distributed and 299 were retrieved. From the interviews, the functions of the monthly home visits were categorized into the following six categories: “finding incidents”, “preventing suicides”, “caring for older people”, “grief care”, “a peaceful passing”, and “connecting people”. Ninety-one percent of Buddhist priests made monthly home visits in the Osaka parish, with a median of 30.0 times per month. The median duration of their visits was 25.0 min. Those who carried out a high number of monthly home visits had more experience in: noticing dementia or physical deterioration; being asked for advice about a serious issue; dealing with the grief of bereavement; finding someone whom they were concerned about, but being unsure to what extent to get involved; finding someone in cardiopulmonary arrest or unconsciousness; and finding someone whom they were concerned about but not knowing where to ask for help.