Professional skills in the process of establishing human relations within a support framework: Focusing on building community systems supported by public health nurses

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe elaborate on the process of interaction between supporters and support recipients, to identify the professional skills required to establish human relationships within the support framework, and to propose more viable support system based on the findings. The support setting involved in this study was the community system in which professional supporters were public health nurses, and support recipients were local residents. The subjects comprised 20 municipal public health nurses. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The interview data were then inductively analyzed with the Modified Grounded Theory Approach. Thirty-seven concepts were extracted, which were then classified into five categories: "Prior to establishing relationships"; "Establishing close relationships"; "Establishing extensive relationships"; "Maintaining and developing new relationships"; and "Evaluating relationships". The interactions in this support system employ a process of building a system within the local region in order to solve problems faced by local residents and communities. This process was discovered to empower local residents, having the lead supporting roles shift from the public health nurses to local residents, as the relationships develop. We discussed, and proposed that the key elements of structure of human relationships, problem solution, empowerment of local residents, and accumulation of experience can be connected in one cyclical process.View full abstract