While working as a teacher at a nursing school, the author encountered difficulties in teaching clinical practicum, which prompted her to enter graduate school to tackle these problems. The author engaged in research on the theme of “nursing clinical practicum” both for her master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation and, continued this research after completing graduate school. However, as the author was no longer involved in nursing clinical practicum as part of her daily work, she gradually felt less and less satisfied with the practical application of her research. Therefore, the author received her supervisor’s suggestion and changed her research theme from “nursing clinical practicum” to “research supervision for graduate students.” This allowed the author to once again conduct research directly relevant to her own questions and problems.
This paper presents the author’s research on postgraduate nursing education and how she used the research results to address her issues associated with research supervision and improve the quality of her research supervision.

The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of inactive nurses aiming to return to nursing by comparing and synthesizing the experiences of inactive nurses who have returned (hereinafter referred to as “returner”) with those of inactive nurses who have not (hereinafter referred to as “seekers”), and to obtain suggestions for continuing nursing education to support inactive nurses in their re-employment through discussion of the results. The following two phases were undertaken. The first phase was a qualitative inductive analysis of data collected through semi-structured interviews with 16 inactive nurses. The analysis created 19 concepts expressing the experiences of seekers. In the second phase, the results of the first phase, 67 categories forming 19 concepts representing the experience of seekers, were compared and synthesized with the 79 categories forming 17 concepts representing the experience of returners. The results revealed that the experiences of inactive nurses aiming to return consisted of (a) experiences familiar to both, (b) experiences unique to the seekers, and (c) experiences unique to returners. The results suggested that each inactive nurse’s inability to reenter the workforce is unique, and that reemployment cannot be achieved without the proactive efforts of each nurse. In addition, the provision of career education in the in-hospital education during employment, as well as in basic nursing education may lead to smooth reemployment of inactive nurses.