Abstract
Recent decline in birthrate and aging of population has significantly boosted demand for home care services. The decision to reduce or abolish care facilities by 2011 reflecting the shift in government policy from facility-oriented to home-oriented care also has an impact. However, discrepancies in maintaining service quality are occurring due to chronic shortage and low pay of care professionals. Because care services are provided by diverse geographically-dispersed professionals of the medical, nursing, and caring fields, prompt sharing of knowledge among “team care” members is required to maintain service quality. Thus, we developed a knowledge distribution support system to support team care, aiming to maintain and improve care service quality. As important information source, we devised a “care card method” approach that collects in written form, and digitizes field tacit care knowledge over time of those cared and performed trials in the field to verify the system's validity.
