An Analysis of Trends in Researches on Nursing Education about Fundamentals of Nursing in Japan: 1989-1993

Abstract

This study examined direction of future researches which was useful for the development of fundamentals of nursing by revealing trends and characteristics of present ones. Researches on nursing education were selected from the proceedings of four major nursing scientific academies held from 1989 to 1993 in Japan. Researches about fundamentals of nursing were further selected from those researches and were analyzed especially on types of researches, research designs, research subjects, date collection methods, data analyses and contents of researches. Among 783 researches on nursing education, 125 dealt with fundamentals of nursing. Most of the types of researches were quantitative. Research designs were almost devided into two groups such as an evaluation research and a survey research, which were 93.6% of them. The researches of which subjects were student nurses were 92.8% of them. Contents of researches were classified into the following 5 categories. These were researches (1) on teaching methods, (2) on students, (3) on nursing practicum, (4) on contents of education and (5) on others. They were further classified into 23 subcategories. The results of this study showed that research methods were strongly limited and contents of researches were restricted to teaching methods. This would be a suggestion about courses of future researches on fundamentals of nursing.