Exploring mutual support awareness in Japanese communities: A pilot study.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to examine life situations and perceptions related to the recognition of mutual support among Japanese people. DESIGN: A quantitative, correlational, cross-sectional analysis. SAMPLE: Nine hundred and nine participants who provided complete questionnaire responses. MEASUREMENTS: As a disaster prevention measure, a community center conducted a "questionnaire survey evaluating the recognition of mutual support and several potentially related factors". In our study, these data from a self-administered questionnaire were used secondarily. RESULTS: The perceptions that differed with regard to the sense of mutual support included family structure; satisfaction with support, security, and disaster prevention in the district; being able to ask for help with shopping; closeness of the relationship with one's neighbors; seeing oneself as providing or needing protection; and recognition of existing worries regarding evacuation. In a logistic regression model, the factors predicting the sense of mutual support included being younger than 70 years, being able to ask for help with shopping, and the closeness of the association with one's neighbors. CONCLUSIONS: The study identified situations that might predict the sense of mutual support in individuals in Japanese communities.

Nursing Students' Retention of Knowledge by Basic Knowledge Type: An Exploratory Study.

Students' interests help determine their learning effectiveness and knowledge acquisition and retention. It is necessary to confirm whether there is a difference in the way in which content being learned is remembered by the content type. In this study, we examined the characteristics of nursing students' retention of physiological knowledge and environmental knowledge by utilizing scores obtained in class. The participants comprised 57 nursing students who had taken a class twice-once in their second year and once in their third year. Before and after each class, students completed an 11-question survey with human health and comfort items based on nursing core competencies and Sphere standards. The correct answer rate was calculated using a logistic regression model to account for inter- and intra-individual variations. The estimated correct answer rate per individual showed one of three trends: (1) increasing and decreasing depending on the lesson topic (knowledge type), (2) increasing overall after decreasing, and (3) increasing gradually. Physiological knowledge was retained well, whereas knowledge pertaining to the environment was retained poorly. Even with knowledge of the environment, the knowledge that students apply to their daily lives and social events was maintained.

Genetics education program to help public health nurses improve their knowledge and enhance communities' genetic literacy: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND: As human genetics knowledge develops, public genetic literacy needs to be increased, though the educational capacity for this purpose has not yet been fully developed. Under this circumstance, the daily work of public health nurses can be viewed as an opportunity to enhance public genetic literacy. However, in Japan, there is not only a lack of public knowledge of human genomics but also a lack of public health nurses' recognition about genomic literacy. A short-term education program was implemented as a pilot study. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of the program to support public health nurses' activity aimed at promoting health services-related genetic literacy. METHODS: The genetics education program was implemented in December 2019, in Kagoshima, Japan. Twenty-three public health nurses cooperated with the research. The program was composed of a case study on consultation, a lecture on hereditary diseases, and a discussion on the role of public health nurses. Familial hypercholesterolemia was used as the topic of the case study. We evaluated scores for cognition, affect, and psychomotor characteristics related to their learning goals before and after the program using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Answers in the consultation were qualitatively analyzed. RESULTS: The mean cognitive score, capturing provision of explanations of hereditary disease, was 6.3 before the program but increased significantly to 9.3 after the program (p < 0.001). For the affective score, the goal of which was deepening interest in human genetics, the mean score increased significantly from 8.5 before to 11.0 after (p < 0.001). For the psychomotor score, addressing the need for genetic consultation, the mean score increased significantly from 4.4 before to 8.1 after (p < 0.001). Prominent themes extracted from descriptions on the worksheet post training included, "providing advice and accurate information on genetic disorders" and "referral to a specialized organization." CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicated that this education program helps public health nurses be positively involved in human genetic disorders. Thus, they may connect to their local community to provide accurate genetics knowledge and advice for health management and promoting genetic literacy.