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The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of an online learning program, Learning Program for New Faculty Members, in conveying knowledge of educational practice to newly appointed nursing faculty members. The study participants were assistant professors and research associates from nursing programs in Japan, with less than 5 years of educational experience. In total, 99 people participated in this study, and data from 97 were analyzed. Participants in the control group (43) were frequency matched to those in the intervention group (54) for sex, age, final degree, clinical experience, and academic experience. A pre-test was conducted using an original questionnaire, and there were no significant differences between the two groups in knowledge about educational practice. The intervention group then participated in the Learning Program for New Faculty Members online, at their convenience. After the intervention, a post-test was conducted. In the intervention group, post-test scores were significantly higher for all items except Item 3 (Conducting Class). The intervention and control groups’ post-test scores were 23.55 vs 16.90 for Item 1 (Student Understanding and Support), 28.20 vs 22.17 for Item 2 (Syllabus and Class Design) and 5.40 vs 2.97 for Item 4 (Understanding of Educational Theories). The Learning Program for New Faculty Members was therefore considered to be effective in helping newly appointed nursing faculty members to acquire knowledge. The program was able to overcome the time and environmental constraints of newly appointed nursing faculty members., This is an Open Access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view the details of this license, please visit (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

We developed a new interactive web-based teaching material to improve lung auscultation skills. Our objective was to investigate the effectiveness of the web-based teaching material on nurses with less than one-year work experience, using a prospective, open-label, stratified block randomized controlled trial. Of the 69 participants, 23, 22, and 24 participants were assigned to the web-based, paper-based, and control (with no intervention) groups, respectively. Using a simulator, a discrimination test on seven lung sounds, such as “normal,” “wheeze,” “rhonchi,” “coarse crackles,” “fine crackles,” “left lung diminish,” and “right lung absent,” was conducted. Next, a post-test was conducted after one-week of training. Answers with formal names were considered “correct”; those with common names, misspellings, and without left and right parts were considered “insufficient”; and wrong answers were considered “incorrect.” The control group showed no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test for any lung sounds. The paperbased group showed significant improvement in performance for “wheeze” (p=0.004) and “coarse crackles” (p=0.035). The web-based group showed a significant improvement in performance for “fine crackles” (p=0.026). The number of correct answers in the post-test was higher in the paper- and web-based groups than the control group (p=0.023). The web-based teaching materials that we had developed effectively improved the ability of new graduate nurses to auscultate lung sounds. Additionally, the results suggest that the combined use of web- and paper-based teaching materials may be more effective since the sounds that each method enhanced their ability to auscultate different lung sounds.

This study determined the level of implementation and the importance placed on various nursing activities at clinics in rural areas of Japan in order to explore the achievement and perceived importance of implementing certain nursing roles and activities at such clinics. To identify these items, a questionnaire was administered to 40 nurses working in rural clinics. The results showed that activities related to “Basic Nursing Practice” and “Community Understanding” were recognized as important and were performed by almost all nurses. Some activities related to “Administration and Operation” and “Cooperation with Local Government” were recognized as important, but were not implemented, thereby hampering the continuum of care across the health system. These activities, which are related to collaboration with hospitals and local governments that support the clinics, included adjustment of staff inside and outside the facilities to guarantee the use of paid holidays, as well as collaboration with acute care, remote medical systems, and local governments during emergencies and for disaster preparation. Additional support for nurses in collaboration between clinics in rural areas, hospitals, and regional administrations that support the clinics remains a challenge to be addressed.

Japanese patients often seek hospital services without a primary provider’s referral. A triage nurse who is the initial point of contact for a patient is challenged with the task of expertly evaluating the urgency of the condition and selecting the appropriate specialty service for every patient’s needs. A triage nurse must also recognize any conditions requiring emergency medical services instead of a specialty outpatient service. A modified Delphi method was used to establish expert consensus regarding triage nursing competencies for secondary and higher-level health care facilities in Japan. The initial Delphi round was completed using a questionnaire of 80 competencies that were evaluated by 85 Japanese nurse experts with in-depth knowledge of triage and/or the current Japanese hospital system. Four additional competency items were added based on the experts’ suggestions for a total of 84 items. The experts rated these items on a 7-point Likert scale based on importance. Minimal attrition rate yielded consistent and rich results. The results were analyzed to identify items rated as very important by the majority. Twenty-two items were included in the final list of competencies. The authors then refined the language and reorganized the items into four proposed domains. The proposed domains and the refined list of competencies provide a foundation for the development of training programs for outpatient triage nurses in the current Japanese health care system., This research was conducted with a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant in Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research: issue number 15K15817).