Opinion Survey of Visiting Nurses on the training system for Nurses Involved in Specific Medical Care

Abstract

Along with Japan’s increasingly aging society and rapidly rising medical needs, there is demand for more effective and efficient delivery of medical care. Consequently, there has been movement toward fundamental reforms of health care delivery systems, even within Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. As part of these efforts, review studies have been conducted on nursing and in March 2010 the “Training System for Nurses Involved in Specific Medical Care” was presented. This training system is a new framework grounded in nursing and facilitates the delivery of medical care by nurses with advanced clinical skills. Within this framework, nurses provide a wide array of medical services, which are more closely tailored toward patients’ individual lifestyles. This study conducted an opinion survey about the “Training System for Nurses Involved in Specific Medical Care,” framework with visiting home nurses who work closely with the elderly. The aim was to elucidate the relationship between nurses’ opinions on whether the training system is necessary and the reasons for their opinions. The survey also collected the names of the diseases prevalent in elderly persons who utilize visiting nursing services. Surveys were issued to visiting home nurses working at visiting nursing stations and the results were analyzed by the Pearson’s chi-square test and Cramer’s correlation coefficient. Results showed that 68.5% of the visiting nurses who returned valid responses felt there is a need for implementation of the “Training System for Nurses Involved in Specific Medical Care”