This study aimed to clarify the effect that the build-up of self-determination support by nursing and care staff at long-term care health facilities had on elderly people with dementia and the challenges of implementing this support. Twenty-seven staff members performing interventions provided 8 weeks of support in which they presented a choice of actions to elderly people with dementia in four situations including snacking and changing clothes, and asked these elderly people why they made their particular choice. The endpoints were Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), frontal assessment battery (FAB), mental function impairment scale (MENFIS), and Dementia Happy Check (DHC), which were evaluated by intragroup comparisons between scores at baseline, during intervention, and during follow-up.

  The 16 elderly people with dementia who formed the analysis set underwent a mean number of 79.6 interventions with an implementation level of 63.5%. When compared with before the intervention, significant improvement after the intervention was seen for the scores for FAB (p = 0.007), MENFIS (p = 0.014), and DHC (p = 0.005). Changes in the elderly people with dementia perceived by the staff included “an increase in the words ‘thank you’” and “smiles were seen when an opportunity for choice was presented.” These results demonstrate that a build-up in self-determination support in daily life has a positive effect on the lives of elderly people with dementia.

  This study aimed to assess sarcopenia and related factors in older adults receiving day care services by comparing participants with cognitive impairment (CI) with participants with non-cognitive impairment (NC).

  Participants were older adults (N = 114) receiving day care services. A CI group (n = 57) was matched with an NC group (n = 57) for age and sex. Sarcopenia, cognitive status, nutritional status, and activities at home were assessed for each participant.

  There were no significant differences between the CI (50.8％) and NC groups (47.4％) in the prevalence of sarcopenia. Frequency of receiving day care services was significantly higher in participants of the CI group than in participants of the NC group (p＜.001). In the CI group, activities of daily living (p＜.001) and some activities at home (p＜.05) were significantly lower in participants with sarcopenia compared with participants without sarcopenia. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that “being a woman,” “low nutritional status,” and “low frequency of going outdoors (other than to the day care center)” were significantly related to sarcopenia.

  This study suggests that improving nutrition and extending activity levels at home in women may prevent sarcopenia in older adults receiving day care services.

  The present study aimed to clarify the aspects of reality shock experienced by nurses changing their place of work to special nursing homes for the elderly. A semi-structured individual interview of 14 full-time experienced nurses at a hospital was conducted. They worked as a full-time nurse there for the first time and were in their second to fifth year. From the interview, 11 categories, including 3 major categories, were extracted. Nurses who change their place of work to special nursing homes for the elderly are often unaware about their roles. They reported that they experienced “confusion with the gap that they felt after changing place of work” at special nursing homes for the elderly. They felt “Reality and values of unfamiliar nursing” within this gap. In the process of accepting the gap, “the fluctuation of the identity as a nurse” presented a particular crisis response. Therefore, it was suggested that nurses changing their place of work to special nursing homes for the elderly are prone to reality shock and that appropriate support systems, such as the introduction of an internship system, and appropriate feedback by senior nurses must be established to help such reality shock-prone nurses.

  Aims: The aim of this study is to explore the anxiety of an elderly orthopedic patients after bone and joint disease surgery about the time of discharge.

  Methods: The participants were ten orthopedic hospitalized patients aged 65 years or above. A semistructured interview was conducted, and the qualitative data were content analyzed.

  Results: The results showed that anxiety about the time of discharge consists of five categories: [whether any pain remains], [whether full recovery is possible], [being careful about posture and movement], [there are several things I cannot do] and [I cannot imagine what may happen in the future]. We also found five categories that affect the level of anxiety: [feeling of moderate satisfaction on recovery], [preparation for life after discharge], [whether a cooperating person exists], [the degree of self support], and [having a realistic purpose].

  Conclusions: One of the orthopedics postoperative characteristics is the need to be careful in daily life about posture and movement, and continuous pain. In addition, it was revealed that this need greatly controlled the quality of life after discharge and affected the level of uneasiness.It is necessary to make interventions after assessing whether patients can imagine or consider the state and life after discharge, and to support and consider concrete methods and measures with them.

  [Purpose] The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between social activities conducted by family caregivers who care for home-care patients and quality of life (QOL), and to obtain suggestions for promoting social activities to maintain and improve QOL of caregivers and for maintaining their social health.

  [Methods] The subjects were family caregivers over the age of 60 who are engaged in home-care, and patients used the home-visit nursing stations in Tohoku region. The anonymous self-administered questionnaires were distributed to the subjects by 29 home-visit nursing stations, and collected by mail. Descriptive analysis was used for all items. The QOL score was compared with each item. Multiple regression analysis was performed using their QOL as dependent variables.

  [Results] The variables significantly related to QOL of family caregivers were personal activity scores, presence or absence of hobbies, frequency of going outside, sense of social activity restriction, sense of caregiving role satisfaction, and presence or absence of Day-care services.

  [Discussion] The results suggested that it is important for nursing personnel to comprehend the personal activities and hobbies of caregivers, to consider creating opportunities of going out and coordination of services, and to propose plans for their maintenance of activities.

  This study aims to understand the focus of nursing support provided to families of elderly inpatients with dementia. For this purpose, a review of literature published between 2006 and 2018 was conducted using the Ichushi-Web. Based on a review of 19 papers, 86 codes, 21 sub-categories, and 6 categories were created. The six categories were “Daily consideration for the families,” “Improving relationships to reduce physical and mental burdens,” “Supporting the relationship between patients and their families,” “Collaboration in patient care with families,” “Collaboration with other occupations,” and “Hospital discharge support.” The findings showed that while the length of stay in the hospital was shortened, nurses at the hospital focused on providing home care support for the families of the patients and many nursing studies with a home-based perspective were extracted. Additionally, the results suggested that nurses conducted not only support for homecare, but also considerable support for the families engaged in care.