“As Normal” Co-created by Visiting Nurses and Patients: Ethnographic Study on Visiting Nurse Station in Japan

Abstract

In Japan, where one out of four elderly are over 65 years old, with some 4 million visiting nurses, there is a structured system for patients to spend their final days at home instead of in the hospital. This paper aims to illustrate how collaboration between visiting nurses and patients can achieve the living style of patient’s choice through co-creation. It displays methods for sustaining the normal life of the patients through detailed case studies of visiting nurses who not only provide nursing care but are proactively engaged in maintaining the “normal” life activities of the patients.

Up until now in the research of Japanese visiting nurses, there were virtually no long-term holistic investigation/research spanning several years where ethnography was being used, nor analysis conducted on co-creation between visiting nurses and patients. In that sense, the analyses in this paper are substantial.