Activities aimed at developing human resources who are ready to provide daily medical and health consultations in the town, meeting places, festival venues, and more

How secure would you feel if there was someone close to you with whom you were free to consult regarding health issues, without going to a hospital? They visit you regularly and are present in the town, community center, meeting places, stores, cafes, nurseries, festival venues, and more. A town with such a person is attractive. This person is called a community nurse. Using their medical knowledge and expertise, including communication ability, a community nurse works closely with people in the local community to make their everyday lives happy and enjoyable, and to promote good physical and mental health, and a sense of security.

Unlike hospital nurses, community nurses do not engage in medical practice. They provide health consultations and sometimes support people to enable the early detection of health problems and serve as a bridge to medical or welfare institutions.

Akiko Yata (age 39), from Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture, began these activities more than 10 years ago, which were unique at that time. Now she is promoting the spread of the activities and human resource development all over the country.

The bereavement of her beloved father served as the catalyst for her entry to this field. Her father, who passed away at the age of 55, continued to rely on nurses and other medical professionals until his final moments. With a wealth of knowledge on the course of the illness and treatment, those professionals could predict what would happen in the future. They gave empathetic, appropriate advice that gave a sense of security to her father, who had terminal cancer, and other patients. This interested Ms. Yata. She felt that the daily activities of talking to people and providing empathetic advice would also be helpful for people without health problems. Ms. Yata, who was 26 years old and the mother of three, swore to her father, "I will become a nurse."

She studied hard and in 2008, she passed the entrance exam to (what was then known as) the Department of Nursing of University of Shimane Junior College. She was 27 years old. As a first-year student, she learned about the idea of community nursing. From her experience of attending to her father on his deathbed, she appreciated this idea. She wasted no time in starting activities as an apprentice community nurse with five other students at a local coffee shop and other places.

In 2011, she transferred to the School of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University. While continuing her activities as an apprentice community nurse, she participated in Co-Unnanjyuku, a project organized by the city government of Unnan, Shimane, for developing next-generation human resources who will play the leading role in local revitalization. There she learned what led to the creation of a mechanism for spreading and fostering community nurses. After becoming qualified as a nurse and health nurse, in 2015, she played the leading role in establishing Community Care K.K. (where she serves as a director at present), a company that operates a home-visit nursing care business in Unnan City, in cooperation with the city government of Unnan and a company that operates the home-visit nursing business. Based on this company, she began community nursing activities on a full scale. In June 2016, she launched the Community Nurse Project, a course for developing human resources and sharing expertise, mainly in Tokyo. She launched this project to spread community nursing activities all over Japan. Twelve people qualified as nurses participated in the initial class. In 2019, the number of people other than healthcare professionals began to increase. More than 160 people have completed the course so far.

The activities gradually expanded all over the country, with the emergence of local governments and companies that are proactive in building energetic communities. Ms. Yata intends to train community nurses into human resources who work in the healthcare field and play a role in building communities where people can live cheerfully, delightfully, and energetically. She wishes to energize Japan by increasing the number of community nurses.

While local communities are being lost, community nurses will play an important role as the adhesive between people and medical care.

Local communities are facing a major problem-the loss of communities attributed to the declining birthrate, the aging population, and depopulation. Therefore, community nurses will play an increasingly important role as the adhesive between people. The flexible idea of having people do what they can where they can is excellent. We also appreciate the actions taken by Ms. Yata, who paid attention to this unprecedented project in Japan, took the initiative and expanded the system for developing human resources and spreading the activities all over Japan by involving local governments and companies.