We interviewed 18 institutionalized elderly persons who had a history of falls. Based on their personal experience, they described their viewpoints on falls and preventing them. The results are as follows. More than 70% of elderly persons with a history of falls perceived the falls as painful. Concerning fall prevention, their views can be classified into four categories: 1) Prediction of locations likely to cause a fall, 2) Injury, 3) Effects of falls on the injured and others, and 4) Outside advice. The subjects stated that the bathroom areas (toilet and bathtub) would be the most dangerous. Subjects prevented falls by grasping nearby objects when they slipped, using walking aids for stability, moving slowly, and keeping an eye on the floor while walking. More than 70% of older adults expressed that they were afraid of falling again and were taking preventive action. They especieally feared falling in the bathroom, where they were most likely to lose their balance.

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A study on the influence of clinical experience on nurse career development, as viewed from the self-evaluation of ability, and in the context of self-image.
Subjects who participated in this study ranged in age from their 20's (21.1%) to their 50's, most of them having experience of more than 15 years.
Six factors were extracted from factor analytic studies of self-image.
The factors were: independence, sociability, receptiveness, competence, sensitivity, and rational.
Based on comparison of the age groups and the number of years of clinical experience, the receptiveness factor showed a significant difference. The factor showed higher scores for both the older age group, and for those with more than 15years of clinical experience.

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This survey was designed to discuss preventing infection in patients who received nasogastric tube feeding. We investigated the microbiological flora in the 19 nasogastric and 31 joint tubes in 13 patients in neurosurgery. Bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus spp. or Pseudomonas aeruginosa were isolated from the nasogastric tube independently of the length of its retention period. In the joint tube, S. aureus, Pseudomonas spp. and Acinetobacter baumanii were found to be inhabited throughout the tubes. These results show that infection may occur via nasogastric and joint tubes. There were significant differences in the types of bacteria between nasogastric and joint tubes, probably resulting from the difference in the portal of entry. To protect patients receiving nasogastric tube feeding from infection, it can be said that it is necessary for nurses to provide the patients with nursing care effectively such as keeping materials clean, oral or nasal care in addition to thoroughly tube flushing.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate social skills in young women and to analyze it from their educational backgrounds and lifestyles. Subjects were 533 female students selected from a special training college, a junior college and a university in Aomori prefecture, Japan. Social skills were measured by using Social Skills Inventory (SSI) that was composed of six basic social skills; emotional expressivity, emotional sensitivity, emotional control, social expressivity, social sensitivity, and social control. The SSI score is the total of six basic social skills. We compared SSI score of students in nursing course with in other course.
Significant differences existed among emotional sensitivity, emotional contorol and SSI score in relation to educational background, social control in terms of birth order, emotional expressivity in relation to having lived with grandparents. In nursing course, emotional sensitivity score was lower than school nurse course, and emotional control score was higher than educational course.
The SSI score appears to be significantly tied to emotional expressivity, emotional sensitivity, social sensitivity and social control, and our results suggest that social skills would be improved by promoting these four skills.

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The purpose of this study was to elucidate the level of nursing staff's understanding of their liability in nursing practice in Japan. From four general hospitals in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, 1361 nurses were surveyed using a newly-developed self-reporting questionnaire designed to determine their understanding of their level of liability in nursing practice in the event of a medical accident.
Factor analysis showed that the scale of nurses' understanding of their own liability comprised two factors: "self-awareness of one's duty as a nurse" and "refusal to shift liability onto doctors". The validity of this scale, and the reliability using the test-retest method had been confirmed. Nursing staff's judgment of the degree of their liability was considerably affected by the circumstance of a medical accident. It was suggested that nurses had two internal criteria to make such judgments: whether or not "the average nurse might have foreseen the accident when assessing the situation", and whether or not "the nurse should have foreseen and avoided the accident even though the accident should have been foreseen and prevented by the doctor in charge."

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The purpose of this study was to find out what the first overnight-stay at home means to the stroke patients and family caregivers and to clarify their perceptions of the experience. The subjects were 17 patient-family cases concerning the first-time stroke patients in rehabilitation ward of the hospitals. They were interviewed by semi-structured questions. The data was taped, transcribed, and then analyzed in inductive method.
The results were as follows：1) After the first overnight-stay at home, the stroke patients experienced the joy of their independent activities, the expansion of a free living environment, the difficulties in daily living, and recovering their relationships with family and community. 2) The families taking care of the stroke patients experienced their care burden as well as the enhanced family unity. 3) Through the experience of the overnight-stay at home, the following groups with different characteristics were found: The group that the family caregiver found it necessary to administer constant and careful attention, the group that both patients and families felt the difficulties in daily living, and the group that the family members had strong anticipation for the patients' recovery.

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Most nurses in UK and USA no longer wear traditional caps. In Japan, it is common to see them, although their abolition has been the topic of debate over the last 20 years and less nurses have come to wear them. The tendency to reconsider a nurses' caps in Japan has been resulted from some negative findings that wearing caps is impractical, unhygienic, costly, and that authoritative image attached to a cap is apt to prevent maintaining rapport between patient and nurse. However, there seems to have been hardly any arguments toward the abolition from the viewpoint of feminism. The history teaches us that the origin of nurses' cap can be traced to a nuns' veil that symbolized subordination and obedience. Furthermore, a nurses' cap leads us to review nursing as a women's role and a traditionally oppressed female occupation in health care systems. The authors referred to British and American articles to study how a nurse's cap has been related to the image of subservience and reinforced the female gender role in the light of the history of women and nursing.

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[in Japanese]

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