Specialties of Public Health Nurses at a Comprehensive Community Support Center : / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

It has been reported that a comprehensive community support center cannot maintain boundaries between particular specialties (ie, public health nurses, social workers, and the chief care manager), resulting in excessive workload, staff shortages, and resignations. Nurses are beginning to acknowledge poor interprofessional interactions among themselves and are now concerned with improving nursing practice. In this study, we aimed to clearly specify the specialties of nurses in order to obtain relevant basic data for establishing an educational training system for community health nurses. We conducted text mining analysis using KH Coder open source software by targeting 8 community health nurses with over 3 years of experience in Prefecture A. The following 5 clusters of specialties were extracted: “Ability to provide consultation, maintain good relationships, and make good decisions”, “Good knowledge of medical care in general, care of the elderly with dementia and mental illness, and their situation at home”, “Services that prevent the elderly from becoming dependent”, “Collaboration with other professions by participating in home visits or community center visits”, and “Work that requires comprehensive guidance on health within the community”. To clarify the nursing specialty, it is desirable to comprehensively support a team approach by utilizing each specialty in 3 job types. In addition, we suggest that general community nursing roles can be better demonstrated by developing a vision, providing accessible consultation and supervision, and outlining a clear career path as part of the educational system.