The purpose of this study is to describe the recovery process of wives who had a psychological crisis due to cardiopathy suddenly manifesting in their husband.
Data was obtained from interviewing nine wives whose husbands were hospitalized in critical care units(CCUs)in a large urban hospital in Japan. The research methodology used was a modified grounded theory approach. Data regarding the wives were classified into five categories:their grasp of the situation(grasp of situation);how they coped with situation(coping);their relationship with medical staff;their psychological distance with cardiopathy;and their recognition of how their role as a wife changed during the process(role recognition). Findings included that the coping style of the wives changed with their grasp of the situation, and that the relationship between the wives and the medical staff changed in each stage of their coping process. Further, the role recognition of the wives changed from that of a wife to that of a wife with a husband with cardiopathy. This was influenced by psychological distance processes with the cardiopathy, and their attainment of knowledge about the condition.

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The purpose of this study was to clarify how nurses recognized the team care in an intensive care unit. The participants were ten nurses who had clinical experience of three to ten years in an intensive care unit. Data were collected by semi-structural interviews, and were continually compared and analyzed by Kinoshita's modified Grounded Theory Approach.
As a result, recognition of nurses to the team care consisted of three categories; "Accompanies the team care," "Controls the team care," and "Manages the team care." These categories were developmental change towards providing the best team care to the patient. They were drawn with two axes, experience of a nurse and a nurse's competence, and had received influence in relationship with the doctor.
The results of this study showed that developed a nurse's competence was important. Therefore, it was suggested that increasing the concern about a medical professionals, having the opportunity of study, in order to understand the role and function of a special domain of each other, and more communications were required in order to provide the best team care.

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[in Japanese]

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The purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate the impact on a family system's health of a family member's admission to an emergency and critical care unit(ECU). Data was collected from 220 family systems in a metropolitan area in Japan. Of the 220 family systems, 112 had had a member admitted to an ECU, 108 had not. The family system's health measurement questionnaire(FSHM)(developed by the author prior to the study)was used to gather information from the subjects.
The study found that family systems which have had a member admitted to an ECU tend to score higher on the FSHM(indicating a higher level of health)than those which have not. This finding was contradictory to assumptions and indicated that even if a family system had a member admitted to an ECU, the family system's health did not deteriorate. This conclusion could suggest the existence of an emergency nursing intervention which reinforces the family system's power of growth and ability to recover from an experience in an ECU.

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