1) Purpose: The purpose of this study was to clarify the effect of the guidance, which was carried out for the promotion of professional identity formation immediately before the practice, to the nursing students' professional identity, self-confidence and concerns about appraisal.
2) Method: 67 third-year students in a nursing professional school were guided immediately before the practice using 2 hours of lecture and 3 hours of exercises. All the contents of the lecture and exercises were prepared by us. The questionnaire survey was used before and after the guidance.
3) Results: The guidance immediately before the practice had an effect to increase self-confidence and professional identity of the students, and to reduce concerns about appraisal.

In 1996 we started an early exposure program of nursing and care for medical school freshmen at University of Tsukuba. The program consisted of out-of-hospital practice and in-hospital practice; 195 medical students completed the program in the 1999-2000 academic year. We analyzed students' questionnaires about satisfaction with the program after each practice and studied better settings for early exposure. Students were randomized to three out-ofhospital settings (nursing home, facilities for the elderly, and home-visit nursing) and also randomized the order of the practice (in-hospital or out-of-hospital first). The mean satisfaction score for setting was the highest for the home-visit nursing and lowest for nursing homes. The mean satisfaction score for order of practice was higher when in-hospital practice was done first.

The need for medical team care is increasing because of advances in medical care and changing national needs. For more than 20 years medical students at the University of Tsukuba have participated in medical team care practice before bedside learning during the third trimester of their 4th year. The objective of this practice is to understand patients from the nurses' point of view and to learn cooperation between doctors and co-medical staff. We analyzed students reports to study what they had learned. A total of 326 items in 11 categories were specified in the free-response part of the reports. The largest category was “nursing/nurses” and the second largest was “communication/human relations.” The results show that the students learned points other than the General Instruction Objectives and that the practice was extremely effective.

Although attempts to teach medical students about nursing have become more frequent, nurses who have lectured to medical students and have been involved in their practical training have rarely published studies evaluating their training methods and objectives. This study was performed to clarify the significance and problems of such teaching. Nurses now participate in the education and training of medical students in at least half of medical training hospitals and schools. They thought that this is a unique and beneficial educational opportunity and had high expectations. However, four main problems have been identified: the motivation and attitudes of medical students, the time and environment for training, the understanding of clinicians, and the problems of nurses, such as lack of educational experience.

Objective To investigate the application of systematic rehabilitation nursing procedure on improving the life quality of patients with long-term conscious disturbance. Methods A total of 7 patients with long-term conscious disturbance had been chosen as sampling and applied warm bath to stimulate, back slight vibration, sports training and other rehabilitation nursing program. The mild disturbance of consciousness re-scoring( NASVA ) was used to evaluate the quality of life improving in patients. Results The 7 patients received four stages rehabilitation nursing care ( average 6 months) as its procedure, in which two patients got rid of decerebrate rigidity completely while five patients minimized the upper and lower extremity contractures of joint. Compared with the implementation of rehabilitation care before, the 7 cases of patients with long-term conscious disturbance improved their exercise, feeding, excretion, cognition, language expression, verbal commands and other aspects of NASVA score after rehabilitation care with statistically differences (P<0. 01). Quality of life of 7 patients were significantly improved, of which one patients return to school to continue study, and four patients′contractures of lower and upper extremity joint improved and they could go back home,and live with their family and eat by mouth. Conclusions Implementation of systematic rehabilitation nursing procedure can improve the rehabilitation effects for patients with long-term conscious disturbance and contributes to those patients′quality of life.