The aims of the present study were to identify ethical issues that nurses have encountered in practice at university hospitals that provide technologically advanced medical treatment, to clarify how they handled these ethical issues, and to determine the extent to which they require ethics education.

　A questionnaire was developed based on “ETHICS and HUMAN RIGHTS in NURSING PRACTICE”（S.T. Fry & Nen, 1997）. Respondents included 986 nurses who cared for inpatients at three university hospitals.

　The following results were obtained. Of all respondents, 78.2% indicated that they have been directly involved in some ethical issues. Respondents most frequently experienced and have been most deeply troubled with “insufficient nursing staff”. Although ethical issues related to “using/not using physical/chemical restrains” and “respecting/not respecting informed consent for treatment” were frequently experienced, many respondents indicated that “pain management” was the most difficult issue. When resolving ethical issues, many respondents consulted with colleagues, patients, and the families; however, respondents were least likely to consult with a specialist in ethics, an ethics committee, or the Nursing Association. These findings indicate that sufficient resources were not available for nurses dealing with ethical issues. Furthermore, as respondents did not evaluate themselves as knowledgeable about ethics, they believe that they require ethics education.

　The present findings suggest that some ethical issues should be managed organizationally within institutions and that the contents of ethics education should be refined.

　The purpose of this study was to identify lecture contents concerning health care wastes in Japanese nursing schools, and from analyzing the results to show the sense of learning them in nursing education.

　Questionnaires, consisting of 27 items which related to the treatment and problems of health care wastes, were sent to 303 nursing schools in all areas of Japan and 93 of them （30.7%） returned completed questionnaires in June-September 2002. The data were subjected to factor analyses （initial factor method, varimax rotation）, and five factors with 20 items were identified. Each factor was named with educational meaning, as follows : （1）system and cooperation of the safety treatment, （2） outline of health care wastes, （3）control of infectious wastes, （4） notice of concern for the environment, （5） role as a person who disposes of health care wastes. Scale scores of each factor were analyzed by ANOVA （Analysis of variance） and multiple comparisons （Tukey method）. The results showed that lectures on factor I were significantly less than the others, and also that lectures of nursing colleges rated high only in factor III as compared to those of technical schools.

　These findings suggest the sense of learning about health care wastes, and the need for relevant education in nursing schools.

　The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the origin of the Social Service System （SSS） and the evolution of its role in nursing basic education in Mexico, and to examine the significance and challenges of the SSS. We then extract implications for Japanese nursing education including international technical cooperation from the results of the examination.

　Adopting a historical approach, we collected SSS-related documents, and interviewed health officials, instructors, clinical trainers and students.

　There are two findings from the results of the examination. First, the role of the SSS on nursing basic education in Mexico has been operating amid the expectation of effective outcomes educationally and socially. In order to achieve the goals which were set by the Health Ministry, it was necessary for the Government to make the educational and social significance of the SSS more specific, and to improve the SSS to perform more systematically. Secondly, the SSS in Mexican nursing basic education is instructive for Japanese nursing education, because it shows a model of “social activity by students” and “education in clinical practice for students in the final stage of nursing basic education”. Finally, Japan’s future role in international technical cooperation must be based on a more thorough understanding of the SSS.

　Our future challenges include describing and analyzing the evolution of the SSS on nursing basic education more concretely, and studying it for suggestions which could be applied to nursing education in Japan.

　The present study examined whether or not an intervention combining nursing technical training and stress management education for pre-graduation nursing students（namely “a pre-graduation stress management education program”）reduced the severity of their “reality shock” responses after graduation. Students in an intervention group were provided with the pre-graduation stress management program for a week. Stress responses and the recognition of stressors and social support（reality shock response）were investigated before the students started working and three months after they started working. A control group included students with the same educational background who did not receive the program.

　The results indicated that stress response levels after three-month working （reality shock） among students in the intervention group were significantly lower than those among the control group. In particular, symptoms of “anxiety and insomnia” and “social dysfunction” were reduced （p<0.05）. Significant differences were also observed in terms of the recognition of stressors and social support. These findings suggest that the implementation of the pre-graduation stress management program allowed students to learn how to predict and manage stressors, and the nursing technical training reduced the reality shock response after three-month working.