Education systems for occupational health nursing in the basic education course for public health nurses in Japan

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to clarify the education systems for occupational health nursing (OHN) in the basic education course for public health nurses (PHNs) in Japanese nursing universities. Methods: An anonymous self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted among 234 nursing universities with PHN courses. We surveyed the outline of PHN/OHN curricula, clinical practicum in OHN, and the skill achievement levels of students in OHN clinical practicum according to the “Minimum Requirements in PHNs Education 2004” (MR2004) developed by the Japan Association of PHN Educational Institutions. The data were analyzed using a t-test and Mann-Whitney U test. All statistical analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS ver. 21.0. Results: In the analysis, we used data from the 80 respondent schools (response rate 34.2%). In 39 schools (48.1%), lectures related to a clinical practicum in OHN were offered as independent subjects in the school curriculum; of these 39, two schools (2.5%) offered OHN as multiple independent subjects. In 49 schools (60.5%), clinical practicum in OHN was designated as a part of PHN training. In colleges that had a clinical practicum in OHN, the number of lecture hours related to OHN was 9.7 ± 11.6 hours, which was more than that in colleges without such a practicum, although the difference was not significant. We compared the skill achievement levels between the groups where the number of days in the OHN clinical practicum was up to two and up to three or more. There was a tendency for the skill achievement level to be higher in the group with the greater number of days, with a significant difference in 16 of 19 items. Conclusions: We clarified that the PHN curriculum is offered with many variations in colleges, and that the lectures and clinical practicum in OHN are developed according to each college’s policy. We observed the following tendency: the more days in the OHN clinical practicum, the higher the student’s skill achievement level. These findings suggest that guaranteeing a certain number of days in a clinical practicum in OHN is important for realizing high-quality PHN training.