Role to Play by Outpatient Nurses in Supporting Home Care

With the participation in a national model project, Hanawa Kousei Hospital, in cooperation with Higashi Shirakawa Medical Association, took it upon itself in 2012 to promote a venture to build up a base for cooperation to provide home medical care within the region. For this purpose, we attended seminars on how to team up with people engaged in different types of business and meetings to exchanges views and ideas. Using summaries for regional cooperation, we also took part in case conferences and leadership conferences for leader-training and case study discussion. By first-hand experience, we realized how important was the role outpatient nurses should play. We conducted an interview with six leaders of outpatient nurses whom we become acquainted with in various meetings and categorization analyses were made of the roles which they said outpatient nurses should play. It was found that what the outpatient nurses should keep in mind includes:gathering information to put it to practical use in home care, working in close cooperation with people engaged in different types of business, and putting themselves in patients shoes with a deep understanding the lifestyle of patients. Furthermore, to perform the part of home care supporters, we realized the matter of cardinal importance was to educate outpatient nurses and consolidate a regional network.