Abstract
The purpose of this study was to develop a tool that enables community care specialists, such as public health nurses, to perform comprehensive assessment to identify elderly people in whom future health care needs may develop, and also enables elderly people themselves to simply assess factors that affect healthy long life. To collect items for comprehensive assessment, we conducted a group interview with 8 public health nurses and evaluated the literature. From the obtained items, some were selected by the researchers and the public health nurses, and a survey was performed on public health nurses (effective replies, 137) with 5 or more years of experience to perform weighting of each item and determine the validity of the contents. As a result, 50 items associated with care prevention needs were divided into the following 8 categories: 1) health promotion by elderly people themselves, 2) physical condition, 3) nature of daily living, 4) social contact, activity, 5) housing and surrounding environment, 6) family conditions, 7) changes in the surroundings or feelings, and 8) supporters and the use of services. This assessment tool contained items from the professional view of community nursing that are not incorporated in the existing assessment tools, such as health promotion by elderly people themselves, living rhythm, and life events. Further studies are necessary on assessment criteria and measures to make the best use of obtained results for the activities of public health nurses.
