Kim, Hae-Young;Chung, Hyun-Suk;Jeon, Byoung-Hak;Shin, Mi-Hyeon
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Purpose: The study analyzed continuing educational needs with the aim of developing continuing education program for home healthcare nurse specialists. Methods: A convenience sample of 101 home healthcare nurse specialists affiliated with 89 home health care agencies in Seoul, Busan, Dae-gu, Inchon, Jeonnam, Keongnam was used. Data was collected with a self-report questionnaire from May 10-31, 2010, and analyzed with descriptive statistics using SAS 9.13 program. Results: Of the participants, 88.1% reported that continuing education was necessary and 58.2% reported that the education was needed for peak job performance. The participants also reported that it would be proper if continuing education is given on a Saturday(56.4%) by home healthcare institute(49.5%) or homecare nurses association (38.6%) for 1-3 months(56.4%). The participants scored more than 3.0 in the current performance at six of the seven home healthcare nurse specialist roles, and scored more than 3.5 in the necessity of continuing education for seven roles in 47 jobs. Conclusion: Various programs for continuing education have to be developed and need to focused on the jobs needed for home healthcare nurse specialist and the most frequent disease. For this purpose, every home healthcare organization has to select their unique area and develop their own educational program. Furthemore, home healthcare nurses association has to build an education operating system that incorporates all program aspects.