This study aimed to identify the characteristics and quality of life (QOL) of elderly patients with gastric cancer undergoing gastrectomy, and nursing interventions for the perioperative period through a literature review. Furthermore, this study reflected on the literature reviews to examine the type of nursing support required by such patients. The method involved searching for literature using keywords such as gastrectomy, gastric cancer, elderly, QOL, and nursing in PubMed and Igakuchuozasshi Web. Literature published from 2009 to 2018 were targeted. Six articles that described the characteristics of elderly patients with gastric cancer undergoing gastrectomy and five that related to the evaluation of nursing interventions in the perioperative period of gastrectomy were extracted based on the title or abstract. Based on the result of this examination, it was concluded that nursing support for these patients must include oral care, physical activities, and personal interaction, rather than simple support for diet from the viewpoint of frailty prevention. Furthermore, the results indicated a need for nursing support not only during hospitalization but also before surgery and after discharge from the hospital.

This study aims to understand the relationship between the anxiety of nursing students towards a specific field nursing practicum and their awareness of the experience of the basic nursing practicum.

A survey was conducted with 436 nursing students from five vocational nursing schools all using the same curriculum, before the commencement of specific field nursing training from June to July of 2016. To measure the anxiety of nursing students towards the specific field nursing practicum, we conducted a cross-sectional study using an anonymous self-rating questionnaire which includes the Kagoshima University version of the Clinical Stress Questionnaire (CSQ) with 17 items in 3 factors (threat, challenge, and harmful emotions).

The questionnaire was distributed to 436 nursing students, and 334 responses were collected (76.6%). Of these 321 were determined valid (73.6%). A multiple regression analysis was performed using the three factors of the CSQ as objective variables. The results show the value of the adjusted R-squared (R²) in this study as 0.429 for threat. The explanatory variable with the highest contribution was “Anxiety towards the future performance of nursing in the specific field nursing training”. For the challenge factor, the R² was 0.394, and the highest contributing explanatory variable was “I like nursing”. For the harmful emotion factor, the R² was 0.431, and the highest contributing explanatory variable was “I do not like nursing”.

The results of the multiple regression analysis suggested that the anxiety of nursing students towards the specific field nursing practicum may be related to their awareness of the experience in the basic nursing practicum, such as “Inadequate volumes of assignments during the basic nursing practicum”, “Having a difficult time due to mistakes made during the basic nursing practicum”, “Dissatisfied with the achievement of the basic nursing practicum”, and “Having an unfavorable relationship with other group members”.

The findings suggest that the awareness of the experience in the basic nursing practicum : the anxiety towards the performance of the nursing, being poor at communication, and not really wanting to provide the nursing are related to the anxiety towards specific field nursing practicum. This suggests that it would be possible to reduce the anxiety towards the specific field nursing practicum by providing support for nursing students according to their achievement in the basic nursing practicum.

Care evaluation, including a sense of discomfort, such as body twisting and recognition of the use of assistive device while providing care, was conducted using questionnaires pertaining to after care and the use of a switch button during care in order to develop assistive devices for repositioning care, which provide benefits and comfort not only to caregivers but also to care receivers. A total of 30 general elderly people were recruited and were provided with repositioning cares by clinical nurses. Among them, 28 participants, with an average age of 72.3±3.9 years, were analyzed for their experiences of care. The degree of care satisfaction was related to the sense of body twisting and support instability. The sense of body twisting during care commonly occurred while turning from supine to lateral position or changing a diaper. The recognition of using assistive devices was positive. Although using an assistive device has been known to reduce human warmth, it can help caregivers in alleviating their burden while providing positioning care, and care receivers in eliminating their hesitation and concern for their caregivers.

The objective of the present study was to determine the effects of exercising in a hot spring on shoulder stiffness. Ten adult women with subjective symptoms of shoulder stiffness underwent two different interventions (A: exercise only ; B : exercise while bathing in a hot spring). As indicators of shoulder stiffness, muscle hardness was used to determine muscle tension in the trapezius muscle region and a Visual Analog Scale was used to assess subjective pain. Each indicator was evaluated before, immediately after and 30 minutes after the intervention.

To determine whether the changes over time in muscle hardness and subjective pain differed between the two interventions, a two-way analysis of variance was performed with the conditions of the interventions and time course. Multiple comparisons were then conducted using the Bonferroni method. The level of statistical significance was set at 5% (two-sided).

A significant interaction (p<0.001) was observed for muscle hardness between the conditions of the interventions and time course. Muscle hardness significantly decreased (p<0.05) 30 minutes after the completion of Intervention A, while muscle hardness significantly decreased (p<0.05) over the course of time in Intervention B. When the conditions of the interventions were compared, muscle hardness of Intervention B was significantly lower (p<0.05) immediately after and 30 minutes after the intervention. Regarding subjective pain, a significant main effect (p<0.01) was observed with time course alone. In Intervention A and B, subjective pain was significantly lower (p<0.05) immediately after the intervention and 30 minutes after the intervention compared to before the intervention.

Muscle hardness decreased with exercise alone and it was effective in improving shoulder stiffness. However, combined exercise and bathing in a hot spring decreased muscle hardness sooner and was more effective for ameliorating shoulder stiffness. The study suggested that subjective pain may lead to continued relief with exercise and exercise while bathing in a hot spring.

The purpose of the present study was to clarify the factors that affect the recovery of schizophrenics living in the local community. The Japanese version of the 24-item Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS) was used for the investigation item of recovery. The influential factors were sex, age, presence of something obtained from the disease experience, optimism scale (【maemukisa】, 【kirakusa】), Japanese version of Health Locus of Control (HLC), Self-Efficacy for Community Life scale (SECL), emotional support network cognitive scale, and Drug Attitude Inventory-10 Questionnaire (DAI-10).

A questionnaire survey was administered to 174 schizophrenics living in the local community, and excluding 17 persons who returned an invalid questionnaire, 157 persons were a target of analysis. The subjects included 90 men (57.3%), the mean age (SD) of subjects was 46.7 (12.9) years, and 115 persons (73.2%) felt that they had grown or obtained something special due to disease experience. Mean total RAS score (SD) was 83.6 (15.1). The optimism scale mean 【maemukisa】 score (SD) was 15.8 (3.6) points, and mean 【kirakusa】 score (SD) was 15.3 (4.7) points. HLC total mean score (SD) was 39.5 (5.1) points, SECL total mean score (SD) was 132.7 (29.3) points, emotional support network awareness scale total mean score (SD) was 7.0 (3.0) points, and DAI-10 total mean score (SD) was 3.9 (4.4) points. In order to examine the influence factors of recovery, multiple regression analysis (stepwise regression) was performed with RAS as a dependent variable and all nine items of the analysis model as independent variables. As a result, the four variables of “SECL”, “optimism scale 【maemukisa】”, “optimism scale 【kirakusa】”, and “presence of something obtained from the disease experience” were adopted as variables with significant influence on recovery, and the adjusted degree of freedom R2 was 0.65.

Persons who have high self-efficacy can work on everything with confidence, and having a positive outlook regarding the future may have led to high recovery. In addition, optimistic 【maemukisa】 seems to be a driving force for living a new life and has a positive effect on recovery. 【Kirakusa】 appears to brings comfort to the mind and feelings and is connected to the ease of finding a unique life and living style. Furthermore, it is suggested that recognizing illness as a meaningful experience in one’s life is important for recovery.

If pandemic influenza would break out, it would be necessary to use coverall personal protective equipment (protective cloth) in order to prevent medical staffs from being exposed to pathogen.

So, tentatively we standardize the length of time wearing protective clothes at most 2 hours. However, only after 30 minutes’ training, most of trainees complain of hot feeling and thirst due to wearing protective clothes. So when infected patients being transported, if wearing prospective clothe for 2 hours, there would be possibility of occurring job-related errors on account of reduced vigilance. Therefore, through this study we research temperature in protective clothes and wear feeling when putting on them for 2 hours.

We set “research design” as an intervention research. When training to accept infected patients, 10 link nurses in nursing department were divided randomly into 2 groups ; one wearing conventional protective clothes (control group), the other wearing protective clothes with air-conditioning vest (intervention group). Thus, to search for wear feeling of protective clothes every 10 minutes up to 120 minutes, and subsequently 2 nurses selected randomly from each group were searched for temperature in protective clothes after 2 hours of wearing.

The results indicated that temperature in protective clothes were up to 2.5°C in control group and in intervention group up to 1.4°C compared with when initially putting on. After 30 minutes, the wear feeling of the protective clothes were poor on account of hot feeling and after 120 minutes almost all members complained that being unable to concentrate on assignment and so on in control group. However, in intervention group, after 50 minutes only 3 members complained hard and bitter for hot feeling.

So the survey results indicate that wearing clothes with air-conditioning vest would be effective to prevent temperature rise in protective clothes and to reduce discomfort mainly due to the heat.

Introduction : From January 22-26, 2018, we conducted a student exchange program for which undergraduate students from the University of the Philippines Manila (UPM) visited Japan. This report summarizes the program.

Program : The student exchange program was held by Yokohama City University (YCU) during the aforementioned dates. Participants were 10 UPM undergraduate students and an accompanying faculty member from the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health and the School of Health Sciences. As preparation for the program, we asked students several questions about disaster medicine and nursing in the Philippines and Japan. We planned all activities based on three categories : the site visit, lectures, and the student exchange program. Ten UPM students and a faculty member participated in the program ; there were no absences. During the site visit, participants visited the various health facilities and outpatient departments, intensive care units, emergency supply storehouses, healthcare centers, and the disaster prevention center in Yokohama City. During the lectures, students focused on understanding the presented contents and asked many critical questions based on their knowledge. Participants also attended the lecture, “Global Nursing,” for YCU nursing students. The UPM students joined the group work in class and led the discussion and final presentation in English. At the completion of the program, UPM and YCU students provided positive feedback about the program, stating that it deepened their understanding of each nation’s disaster medicine and nursing and cultivated networks growing global viewpoint. Moreover, YCU students recognized the differences and similarity between two countries in disaster medicine and nursing.

Conclusion : The student exchange program benefits UPM and YCU students as it provided the further understanding of disaster medicine and nursing in two countries, and nurtured their international perspective. This leads to the development of medical professionals who will work on global issues.

This study aimed to clarify the critical issues concerning the operation of welfare evacuation shelters (WESs) at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake in City A (approximate population=300,000) and City B (approximate population=60,000) in a prefecture devastated by the earthquake. We conducted an interview survey among city and facility staff. The following issues concerning the management of WESs in the two cities were identified : 1) the current situation in which prospective WES users are identified according to pre-determined lists of “Persons Requiring Support in Evacuation,” 2) the need to build a system that can maintain the acceptance of victims during disasters as well as in peacetime, 3) the need for the provision of diverse support types for victims with disabilities who face difficulties living in a shelter, and 4) the lack of proper notification regarding appropriate evacuation shelters for people who need support. This study recommends sharing of disaster countermeasure information and collaboration among facilities designated as WESs and the relevant municipalities.