[Background and purpose] In hilly and mountainous areas, where depopulation and aging are increasing, the maintenance of visiting nurse provision systems is difficult because there are many small-sized home-visiting nurse stations and few visiting nurse workers. Therefore, it was decided to implement a project to construct a framework in which visiting nurse stations in hilly and mountainous areas formed a team and conducted visiting nurse activities while helping each other. Implementation of the project was to be conducted by approaching the Visiting Nurse Station Liaison Council of the Tajima Region of Hyogo Prefecture, which is a typical hilly and mountainous area. [Method] In the first year of project implementation, the project included three steps so that the results of collaboration through the creation of the information provision tool (website) in cooperation with the visiting nurse stations could provide some experience. [Results and Discussion] The project was conducted mainly by the project promotion team with the visiting nurse station managers, with the aim of creating the website; the provisional operation of the website was realized within the fiscal year. The suggestions that could be drawn from the experience of this project were that for home-visiting nurse station managers to fulfill their team activities, they had to increase the mutual understanding and trust of team members, create a place for discussing nursing issues, and be able to show the team’s outcomes.

View full abstract

[Purpose] To clarify the impact of COVID-19 prevention measures on participants in the Program of Healthy Community Life for Older Adults and the resulting changes in their physical conditions and daily lives. [Methods] Analyses were performed on the 13 participants (all female, average age = 80.5 years) whose data on physical measurements and daily lives were available at all three time-points: before and six months after the program, and at the time of its resumption. [Results] In the comparison between the three time-points, significant changes were observed in body weight, bone density and two-step test values. For body weight, a decrease was seen between before intervention and time of resumption, with mean values changing from 51.4kg to 49.1kg and to 51.2kg (p = .013). For bone density and two-step test values, an increase was observed between before and 6 months after intervention, with mean values of bone density and two-step test changing from 66.0g/cm2 to 76.0g/cm2 and to 73.2g/cm2 (p = .013), and from 0.9 to 1.1 and to 1.0 (p = .018), respectively. The numbers of respondents who said they “had no problem with physical condition” and those who stated they “refrained from going out or frequency of going out decreased” were the same, but half of them were “aware of weakness in legs,” some being hospitalized for broken bones after falling. [Conclusion] The suspension of the program for more than six months due to COVID-19 pandemic caused a decrease in the frequency of going out and motor function in the participating older adults. In the future, it will be necessary to develop a new method to enable older adults to engage in activities and social interaction even under infection control measures, and to implement continuous support activities for older adults living in the community.

View full abstract