Home-Care Nursing Challenges for Newly-Qualified Nurses: A Qualitative Study

Introduction: In Japan, it is well known that society is rapidly ageing and becoming a considerable burden to the health care system. One measure for meeting the needs of the aging society is home care that delivers health care to the residences of elderly patients. While this has obvious advantages, there is an acute shortage in home-visit nurses, a crucial issue that needs addressing urgently. While most newly licensed nurses choose to work at large teaching hospitals, more and more newly-qualified nurses have been encouraged to join home-visit services. However, there has been no follow-up study conducted to check how well hose home-visit nurses are coping with the challenges of their jobs, and to our best knowledge, the present study is the first to explore this new field. Methods: The authors had managed to interview about a dozen new home-visit nurses working nationwide throughout Japan to learn if they were facing any difficulties or challenges so as to develop some support to help them. Their open responses to the semi-structured interviewed designed by the study were recorded and transcribed for stepwise analysis to identify recurrent themes that can be described as areas of concern. Results: Four such themes were discovered: 1. ability to understand client needs, 2. ability to provide daily-life care, 3. ability to provide medical assistance, and 4. ability to collaborate with other stakeholders. Conclusion: Each of these themes were then discussed with respect to what support can be given to our new home-visit nurses. Copyright (C) 2019, Taiwan Society of Geriatric Emergency & Critical Care Medicine.