A study of the reality of dealing with difficult situations in terminal care at home by visiting nurses and their sense of humor

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19592523
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Clinical nursing
Research Institution	Yamaguchi Prefectural University
Principal Investigator	TANAKA Aiko Yamaguchi Prefectural University, 看護栄養学部, 教授 (10285447)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	ICHIMURA Takao 山口県立大学, 看護栄養学部, 教授 (80144468) 森田秀子山口県立大学, 看護栄養学部・看護学科, 准教授 (60275435)
Project Period (FY)	2007 – 2009
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2009)
Budget Amount *help	¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000) Fiscal Year 2009: ¥390,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥90,000) Fiscal Year 2008: ¥260,000 (Direct Cost: ¥200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥60,000) Fiscal Year 2007: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000)
Keywords	在宅ターミナルケア / 訪問看護師 / 危機的場面 / 対処 / ユーモア / 質問紙調査 / 脳波
Research Abstract	The first phase of the study was to examine the relationship between subjects' sense of humor and ECG or EEG after watching a video titled 24 hours. ECG and EEG were recorded from six subjects, and conventionally analyzed. Those subjects showing higher sense of humor indicated relatively stable %α in EEG. The second phase consisted of a questionnaire which contained 10 items related to practice mainly about situations with difficult terminal care and 8 items on humor. The subjects were 35 nurses working at a visiting nursing station in A City. As a result, the range of scores on the terminal care items was between 3.5 and 4.4 on a 5-point scale ; however, there was no significant correlation with the humor score. The final phase of this study was interviewing visiting nurses with 5 or more years of experience about their dealing with difficult situations. A qualitative analysis of the data yielded 6 categories : "provide better care," "deepen the involvement," "take care of individuality," "empower the family," "get involved as a team," and "further growth as a visiting nurse." Beside these, the importance of humor was also mentioned.