Objectives: In recent years, accompanying the increased diversification and growing seriousness of public health concerns, the duties demanded of nurses have been expanding and becoming more sophisticated. The objective of this research project was to assess a study achievement creation program to enhance the competence of public health nurses, etc., carried out in the curriculum for the first half of a graduate school doctorate course.
Methods: The program was developed undergoing a process of two test trials and corrections. The program's concept was "what I learn will contribute to tomorrow," and the program was composed of five group sessions during a four-month period and four individual interviews conducted between the group sessions. During this period, the participants clearly defined the problems seen in the field and their own themes of study to resolve them, and then worked toward attainment of achievement targets that they themselves had selected. The researchers, acting as study supporters, assisted to maximize the participants' study achievements. The targeted students were eight public health nurses who were enrolled in the program for the three semesters from October 2008 to March 2010, and included four graduate students and four others registered to complete the course. The program's outcome was assessed by measuring competence before and after program implementation, and process evaluation was conducted by ascertaining whether the participants had passed through three essential stages in their study: 1) awareness of the actual conditions and of the problems concerned; 2) implementation of an improvement plan; 3) confirmation of improvements.
Results: As a result of implementing the program, a certain degree of success, as indicated below, was verified. In the before-and-after outcome assessment, participant A exhibited a significant degree of advancement. Furthermore, the degree of satisfaction scores of the participants after program implementation were sufficiently high to conclude that results worthy of the costs expended were obtained. In addition, it was ascertained that the essential stages of passage, as indicated in the methodology, featured in the study process of the participants.
Conclusion: In the future, this program may find application in graduate school education and for active service public health nurses by municipal governments or companies working in cooperation with universities and associations for public health nurses. Hereafter, areas that must be tackled in order to enrich the program include establishment of study support methods in response to diverse circumstances, development of educational materials and qualitative evaluation indicators and establishment of systems to train study supporters.