Implementation of home health care nursing education in Japan

In Japan, the focus on health care has been shifted from hospital-based to community-based care. In nursing fields, home health care nursing is expected to become well implemented. Although our society is facing the problem of care for the elderly population, the target patients of home health care nursing range from children to the elderly. In home health care nursing education, geriatric nursing focuses on various nursing care techniques in home care settings rather than management skills and leadership. In 1997, the new home health care nursing curriculum was mandated by a committee appointed by the Japanese Government. How have nursing junior colleges incorporated the new curriculum? We expected that the new curriculum might cause changes in nursing lectures and clinical practicum, which have been run so-far on a 3-year associate degree program in Japanese national junior colleges of nursing. We analyzed the results of the survey, with a discussion of the current problems: among 17 junior colleges studied, 4 (23.5%) had incorporated the new curriculum, and the rest had made a plan of implementation. The methods of implementation varied among the colleges probably due to a lack of common definition. Among many problems recognized, the main ones were: i) shortage of faculty members who can be in charge, ii) problems related with clinical sites, iii) absence of common background among the faculty members, and iv) limitation of lecture hours. Training of faculty members in these fields was an immediate concern to the colleges.