The purpose of this study was to clarify the effects of a “Program for the visualization of the key moments for hand hygiene” on students’ awareness of the key moments for hand hygiene, hand hygiene behavior, and whether discrepancies exist between awareness of the key moments for hand hygiene and hand hygiene behavior, with the aim of introducing continuing education methods for hand hygiene.
　The subjects were 26 third-year students in a three-year nursing school program. To determine hand hygiene behavior, a questionnaire survey on the awareness of the key moments for hand hygiene and the hand hygiene compliance rate was conducted before and after the intervention. Students’ awareness levels of the key moments for hand hygiene and behavior before and after the intervention were compared with the Wilcoxon signed rank test, and the relationship between the intervention and whether or not there was a discrepancy between the awareness of the key moments for hand hygiene and hand hygiene behavior was analyzed with Fisher’s exact test.
　The results showed significant increases in all items related to awareness of the key moments for hand hygiene. Hand hygiene behavior showed no significant differences in “2. Before clean procedures” and “3. After body fluid exposure risk,” but there were significant differences in “1. Before touching a patient,” “4. After touching a patient,” “5. After touching patient surroundings,” and “Overall compliance rate.” The intervention was not significantly related to whether or not there was a discrepancy between awareness of the key moments for hand hygiene and hand hygiene behavior. These results suggest that the program affects nursing students’ awareness of the key moments for hand hygiene and leads to improvements in hand hygiene behavior.

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　The purpose of this study was to verify that the “Bowel Movement Pattern Classification Flowchart”, which was developed by the authors (Katogi et al., 2020), is useful in clinical settings. This flowchart classifies bowel movement patterns using two-week bowel movement records. The indicators are the form of stool, frequency of defecation, and number of defecation days. Sixty-three defecation records were analyzed. These were collected from 52 voluntary outpatients and inpatients without acute symptoms. The records were classified into bowel movement patterns using the flowchart, and 50 voluntarily participating nurses also assessed defecation status by examining the records. Of the 27 cases in which the results of the two assessments differed, 22 (81.5%) cases showed that the flowchart provided a better reflection of the defecation situation than the assessment by the nurses, which suggests the flowchart’s usefulness. However, some issues remain in cases where stools were loose for an entire week and when laxatives were used. If these issues are addressed, this chart may be useful as a tool for assessing defecation status in clinical practice.

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　This study identified organizational factors and concrete contents that influence diffusion between evidence-based nursing skills in Japanese acute hospitals. A survey using semi-structured interviews was conducted with 28 nurses working in eight facilities, where there was extensive evidence of diffusion between evidence-based nursing skills. We classified the findings into 27 subcategories based on the interpretation of Code 237 and extracted five categories, including “organizational climate,” “cooperation within the organization,” “promotion behavior of nurse managers,” “attitude and characteristics of hospital ward’s members,” and “economic impact”. The individual aspects of “promotion behavior of nurse managers” and “attitudes and characteristics of hospital ward’s members” were identified as organizational factors that influence the dissemination of evidence-based nursing skills. In particular, the importance of the attributes of the head nurse as a leader was observed. In addition, “organizational climate” and “cooperation within the organization” emerged as internal characteristics of the organizational structure, while “economic impact” emerged as an external characteristic of the organization. Among them, a conducive environment for multidisciplinary collaboration and medical reimbursement were catalysts in the dissemination of nursing skills.

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　This study aimed to clarify the differences in the feelings experienced by healthy adults under two Types of wiping pressure conditions. Disposable towels were used for wiping the upper lateral arms of 30 healthy adults under two conditions：weak pressure (pressure A：2.0～4.0kPa) and strong pressure (pressure B：6.0～9.3 kPa). Participants’ feelings under each condition were scored on a seven-item subjective evaluation scale, including “warm,” “feels good on the skin,” “the feeling of wiping is comfortable,” “refreshing,” “fitting,” “feeling that the dirt has come off,” and “it has a cool feeling.” The subjective evaluation results demonstrated a significant difference among the items “feeling that the dirt has come off”. Based on the participants’ experiences, the original subcategories “I felt calm after being gently wiped” for pressure A and “I felt that it was comfortable” for pressure B were extracted. Considering this, it was suggested that wiping with a weak pressure gave a “calm” feeling, while applying a strong pressure resulted in the participants feeling “comfortable” and “feeling that the dirt has come off.”

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[in Japanese]

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　This study aims to identify the characteristics of the ideas that mid-career nurses use to make clinical judgments based on visual information, by comparing two nurse groups distinguished by levels of competence. After measuring the visual information of mid-career nurses obtained during patient observations, the nurses were shown data of gazes recorded during the observation to elucidate how they make clinical judgments. They were also asked to respond to questions of “What they looked at and what they were thinking about”. The data of gazes and verbal utterance were divided into two groups：one from six mid-career nurses with higher nursing competence and one from twenty-seven general mid-career nurses, for a comparative analysis. The gaze analysis showed no significant differences in the numbers of gazes and gazing times of the two groups. However, for the numbers of utterance units of the observation items, the higher nursing competence group had larger numbers of utterance units than those of the general mid-career nurse group：in the higher nursing competence group, 9.5 times for the “facial part”, 6.5 times for <inference type> utterance units related to ideas in making clinical judgements, and 3.0 times for <analytical care decision type> utterance units；in the general nursing competence group, these numbers were 7.0, 2.0, and 1.0 times. The findings show that the mid-career nurses with higher nursing competence think more efficiently about the situation in more detail even when visual information is limited, and that they utilize reasoning and make analytical judgements based on an awareness of the observations.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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 The present study, involving synthetic towels with and without specific chemical components, aimed to compare the thermal and moisture retention effects of complete bed baths. The subjects were 16 male college students who received complete bed baths using synthetic towels with and without specific chemical components by the standard protocol on different days. The assessment indices were the core and surface skin temperatures, heart-rate variability, moisture/oil contents and pH of the skin, blood pressure, scores of Profile of Mood States-Brief Form Japanese Version (short version of the POMS-J), scores of wakefulness, and level of relaxation based on the Visual Analogue Scale, and the Likert scale was used to assess the texture of towels. For both types of towel, there were significant decreases in wakefulness experienced by the subjects following cleaning and the mean scores for the three question items of the short version of the POMS-J, and there were significant increases in the level of relaxation, core temperature, and skin temperature at the precordium. When using towels with chemical components, the skin temperature of the right forearm temporarily decreased immediately before the end of cleaning, but there were no significant differences between the 2 types of towel, and they had a similar moisture retention effect at that point. However, immediately after cleaning, towels with chemical components temporarily showed a higher moisture retention effect, as the moisture content significantly increased.

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 The purpose of this study is to clarify the modulatory effects of hand bath on autonomic nervous system. For that, we tested hand bath on both high sympathetic and high parasympathetic conditions respectively, which induced by experimental intervention. Participants are all healthy volunteers. In the high-sympathetic condition, the hand bath suppressed the sympathetic activation by mental arithmetic task. On the other hand, the hand bath activated sympathetic activity under the parasympathetic activated condition by rest. These findings indicated that the hand bath has modulating effect on autonomic nervous system by suppress the sympathetic activity under high-sympathetic condition, and by activate the sympathetic system under high-parasympathetic condition respectively.

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[in Japanese]

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