Abstract Objective: In recent years, health literacy – which empowers people to make better health decisions through the reception, understanding, evaluation, and utilization of information about health and medicine – is garnering attention as a driver of health. This study aimed to investigate the need for measures that assess health literacy regarding child rearing in mothers and to clarify the characteristics of current health literacy measures in Japan and abroad, as well as factors related to health literacy.

Method: In October 2018, we conducted a search for studies focused on health literacy in mothers published between 1990 to 2018 using Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms in two databases, PubMed and Igaku Chuo Zasshi.

Results: The search returned 16 studies in English. Most (n=14) were from the United States and none were conducted on Japanese subjects. The measures used in these studies were not specifically developed for mothers, but functional literacy measures widely used on adults to assess basic literacy. With regards to factors related to health literacy in mothers, the studies supported results from previous work (e.g. mother’s age, education, socioeconomical status) as well as identified characteristic factors related to child health (e.g. children’s sleep conditions, symptoms and severity of disease).

Discussion: The results suggested the necessity to improve health literacy in mothers. However, the measures used to examine health literacy in mothers were not originally designed for that purpose; instead, they were versatile measures applicable for a wide range of subjects. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a health literacy measurement scale with reliability and adequacy for Japanese mothers with a certain level of social security and high literacy rate. In addition to distributing information on health and medicine, developing measures for grasping health literacy appropriately regarding child rearing in mothers – particularly with emphasis on the importance of the connection with the child – is a crucial area of future work.

Abstract Purposes: The aim of the present study was to clarify the factors that affect leaving and career continuation of mid-career nurses from prior literature and to obtain suggestions for vocational continuity support.

Method: A literature search of Japan Medical Abstracts Society, Medical Online, and CiNii Articles databases was conducted using the following keywords: “nurse and leaving,” “mid-career nurse and leaving,” “mid-career nurse and occupation continuation, ” and “mid-career nurse and duties continuation,” including all studies published between 2005 and 2017. We investigated 21 studies that mentioned “the reason why mid-career nurses wanted to quit work” and “the reason why they continue working.” Further, we classified inductively “the reason why they wanted to quit work” and “the reason why they continue working” based on similarity and categorized them.

Result: “The reason why mid-career nurses wanted to quit work” was represented in seven categories, which included the following: [disagreement with the career plan], [lack of worth doing of work], [stress caused by human relations], [bad working environment], [uneasiness about nursing practice ability], [growth restraint of self-efficacy], and [there is no reason that continues working in particular]. In addition, “the reason why mid-career nurses continue working” was represented in the following seven categories: [agreement with the career plan], [with the worth doing], [good human relations], [good working environment], [experience to enhance self-efficacy], [there is not a reason to quit work in particular], and [stress management].

Conclusion: “Career plan,” “worth doing,” “human relations of the workplace,” “work environment,” “nursing practice ability,” and “self-efficacy” were related with the factor that nurses wanted to quit, including reasons for continuing occupation. However, stress management was a factor found in career continuity alone, and effective stress management was suggested as a factor that would change mid-carrier nurses’ feeling of wanting to quit work into wanting to continue work.