AUGUSTA STATE UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF NURSING

JAPANESE NURSING SEMINAR

The Department of Nursing hosted our first Japanese Nursing Student Seminar in March, 1997. Since then we have had two other groups in 1998 and 2000. We are expecting our fourth group in March, 2002. The Japanese nursing students come from Takarazuka City Hospital School of Nursing. The students stay with families in Augusta and have experienced our “Southern Hospitality.” During their stay they visit Brandon Wilde, St. Joseph, Doctors, University, and Medical College of Georgia Hospitals. They learn about nursing education and health care in the United States and the impact of managed care on hospital stay and health care services.

Takarazuka is Augusta's Sister City in Japan. The School of Nursing was established in 1995 after the disastrous earthquake that struck Japan. The students visiting us are in their second year of the program. They have all been around 20 or 21 years of age and single. This is much different than ASU's nursing students; most of whom are married and whose average age is typically around 30 years.rn to live with the debilitating effects of stroke, injy s

Four students and two faculty visited Takarazuka in December, 1997. We visited Takarazuka City Hospital and Sanda City Hospital. Both hospitals were very modern and just three years old. They were quite similar to any hospital one might find in the U.S. The main difference was in the appearance of the nurses, all of whom wore the same type of uniform and a nursing cap. Patients stay in the hospital for an average of 28 days in Japan, compared to the 3-5 day stay typical here in Augusta. Therefore the acuity of the patients is much less than seen in our hospitals.

Nursing education in Japan is structured similarly to the U.S. with content and experiences in all the speciality areas of medical-surgical nursing, maternal-newborn, pediatrics, and psychiatric nursing. A major difference, however, is in the amount of clinical experiences students receive in a hospital or community setting with "real" patients. Japanese nursing students spend much more time in simulated learning experiences in their skills labs. which were very elaborately and completely equipped with anything you might see in a real hospital setting. They are starting to do home care in Japan, so each of the schools of nursing visited in Takarazuka and Kobe had a traditional Japanese home built into their skills lab. The homes were completely handicapped-equipped and even had a ceremonial tea table.

The opportunities presented to our faculty and students through this type of cultural exchange with the Japanese nursing students has been extremely valuable and has enhanced our emphasis on cultural diversity in our curriculum. We hope these opportunities will continue and even expand to other cultural groups in the future as we learn to meet the health care needs of an ever diverse patient population.