The purpose of this study was to reveal expectations about medical care for disabled children at special schools. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 155 parents of disabled children living in A Prefecture in Japan. A total of 62(40%) parents responded anonymously. The order of their expectations concerning care-givers for their children at schools was as follows; registered nurse, 22 (35%); mother, 19 (31%); homeroom-teacher, 15 (24%); school nurses, 14 (23%); physician, 8 (13%); father, 7 (11%). This study also found registered nurses were expected to do medical care in collaboration with parents and teachers.

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The purpose of this paper was to report the development process of the scale for measuring nurses' expectations of patients' roles and inpatients' perceptions of patient roles. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with small numbers of nurses and patients. Second, the sentences, which express patients' roles, were extracted from recorded responses, and categorized based on the main subject of the sentences. Each group of sentences in a category was classified into five concepts, which form patients' roles, and the sentences were then organized into 30 items for the primary questionnaire. Finally, the items were refined to represent the concepts, and carefully selected. Experts in the field, consisting of university professors and nurses, established the content validity of the scale. As a pilot study, a questionnaire survey was given to 65 nurses. Based on the results, some factor analyses were performed, and finally the scale for measuring nurses' expectations of patients' roles and inpatients' perceptions of patients' roles, which consist of 29 items, was developed.

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We investigated the endurance of elderly people using the "120 pitch step method". The purpose of this study was to clarify the transition of oxygen uptake (Vo₂), heart rate (HR) and systolic blood pressure (SBP) using the "120 pitch step method", and to investigate the relationship between the Vo₂ of Anaerobic Threshold (AT) and HR, SBP of the "120 pitch step method". Five healthy women with an average age of 64.8±2.4 performed the "120 pitch step method" for six minutes. Their endurance was tested with a cycle ergometer. Steady states of HR and SBP appeared by the 5 minute point in the "120 pitch step method". Steady states of Vo₂ appeared in only 2 people (Subjects B and C). Their Vo₂ at the steady states were 13.8 ml/kg/min and 15.1 ml/kg/min. The average of Vo₂ at AT was 13.2±3.9ml/kg/min. There were correlations between the Vo₂2 at AT and HR, SBP in the "120 pitch step method" (HR: r=-0.85, SBP: r=-0.50). Endurance was so high that HR and SBP were low. Those results show that the "120 pitch step method" over 5 minutes may be able to measure the endurance capacity of elderly people. But further examinations are required for applying this to elderly people who are living in the community.

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