Structuring Home Visits: The Activities of Public Health Nurses Perceived by Students

Purpose: To structure the activities of home visits made by public health nurses, and to define their skill and competence, we conducted a survey on what students, who had completed their practice, had learned.

Method: This study design was descriptive and qualitative. Subject was performed with 64 students who completed community nurse practice (3 credits) in 2003 and 2004. Data used were the students' comments on what they had learned, given on the last day of practice. The data was classified by the contents.

Written informed consent was obtained from each student before participation.

Results: We selected 371 comments for analysis. The number of comments per person ranged from 3 to 15, and the average was 5.8. The comments were divided into 2 classes, ‘activities of public health nurses (PHN)' and ‘what was learned through training.' The ‘activities of PHN' was classified into 12 categories and 78 subcategories. The 12 categories were: ‘characteristics of the community,' ‘various people,' ‘characteristics of the PHN' activities,' ‘cases intervened in by PHN,' ‘the ability required for visiting homes,' ‘ways to assist patients,' ‘precautions for visiting homes,' ‘difficulties in assisting patients,' ‘restrictions by regulations,' ‘implementing health education,' ‘what is required of PHN,' and ‘the PHN in an organization.'

Discussion: The students recognized various competences and skill applied by the public health nurses as elements of professional expertise. PHN addressed the obvious and also the latent needs of patients by perceiving and defining needs and using various assistive techniques.