An Awareness Survey Involving Employees of Welfare Facilities for Older Persons to Develop an Education Program for Functional Recovery Care:

Abstract

We compared awareness of functional recovery care among employees of welfare facilities for older persons in Japan and South Korea, with the aim of obtaining basic materials to develop an education program for functional recovery care, which is also useful for other countries. We conducted a questionnaire survey in both countries, sending 2,000 and 254 copies of a questionnaire to 200 Japanese and 5 Korean facilities, respectively, and obtaining 540 (valid response rate: 27.0%) and 220 (86.6%) valid responses from them, respectively. An older age, higher proportion of non-regular employees, and similar or higher level of awareness of the necessity of expertise and support were characteristic of Korean compared with Japanese care workers. The results support the feasibility of providing education for functional recovery care based on basic medicine in South Korea. It may be necessary to develop a practical education program for the dissemination of functional recovery care through active collaboration with Korean researchers. ＜Key-words＞ functional recovery care (FRC), Japan, South Korea, employees of welfare facilities for older persons, education program