ABSTRACT
Japanese public health nurses are involved in the networking of residents’ groups and organizations such as child-care circles, which is supported by local government funding. Through such activities, public health nurses’ leadership competence is established and recognized in local communities (Hirano et al. 2011). Especially in rural areas, a qualitative study reported that building trust with the community is central in the work of public health nurses (Yamashita et al. 2005). Another case study explained how a public health nurse visited households in her village, held community meetings, and tried to understand the underlying meaning of residents’ words, through which she earned community trust (Hatashita and Anderson 2004). This theory is also applicable in urban areas. A large-scale mixed-method study (Negishi et al. 2010), targeting more than seven hundred public health nurses in the central part of Japan, identified connectedness to community as a specific factor determining their professional identity.
