Abstract
The importance of the control of health from childhood has been expounded in recent years.
There has been a lot of research targeting school children, but little is known about infants at nursery school. Though the need for control of health at nursery school is recognized, the percentage of nursery schools which have a nurse is only 17%.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the circumstances of health activities in nursery schools, and to establish roles for nurse. The data was collected from 457 nursery schools (65.1%) in Saitama Prefecture.
The results were as follows:
1. Nursery schools which have a nurse number 102 (22.4%), but 332 nursery schools (73.0%) have no nurse. The percentage of nursery schools at which the nurse devoted themselves exclusively to the work of health care, was 15.7%.
2. There were various troubles at 51.2% of the nursery schools which have no nurse. The reasons were a lack of knowledge of health care and the difficulty involved in doing both health care and child care.
3. The number of nursery schools that provide health guidance at home is higher in nursery schools which have a nurse than in nursery schools which have no nurse.
Therefore, it is obvious that, presently human resources are not sufficient to provide health education and health care at nursery schools in Saitama Prefecture.
