Abstract
The Department of Nursing in Chiba Prefectural University of Health Sciences, commissioned by the Medical Service Affairs Division in Chiba Prefecture, planned a physical assessment training program involving nurse professionals who work at geriatric nursing homes, and implemented the program on August 20 and September 4, 2012. The training program consisted of a lecture including the physical assessment of circulatory organs, respiratory organs, and digestive organs by visual inspection, palpation, tapping, and stethoscopic examination, and the assessment of swallowing function, as well as practical training using a patient simulator, a nurse training system produced by Kyoto Kagaku. From among the 245 geriatric nursing homes in Chiba prefecture, 67 people from 67 geriatric nursing homes applied for the course and 28 nurse professionals among them took the course. After completing the training program, we requested the participants to fill out a questionnaire to assess the importance and usefulness of the training program. Despite our expectation of the diverse learning needs of nurse professionals working at geriatric nursing homes, the participants mostly answered "satisfied" regarding the training's importance and "useful" regarding the training's usefulness. The physical assessment training for nurse professionals working at geriatric nursing homes in Chiba prefecture is scheduled to be provided again next year with modifications made in accordance with the answers we received to the questionnaire.
