[Health personnel staffing requirements for health examination for the age of 1 1/2 in municipalities in Japan].

Municipalities in Japan offer health education, health counseling, health examination, and home visit services for each development stage of children and for their mothers. In order to determine personnel staffing requirements for the health examination for the age of 1 1/2 as of 1989, data from a questionnaire survey in 1990 conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, was analyzed. Questionnaires were sent to all municipalities and there were 3,198 responses for the response rate of 97.9%. Results showed that in 1989, 98.9% of the 3,012 municipalities were able to independently perform health examinations for 1 and half year old, and in only 0.9% these examination were performed by clinical hospitals. In the large cities designated by the Government, the health personnel system adequately supported these health examination. However due to lack of health personnel, rural towns and villages with small populations required public health nurses to be assisted by other staff, such as health workers or volunteers. And particularly they required help by public health nurses from prefectural Health Centers. For example, in those areas with populations less than 3,000, 53% of the total volume of the work required to be performed by public health nurses during the health examination had to be covered by assistance from prefectural public health nurses. While in cities with more than 300,000 population large numbers of health personnel were assigned to examinations of children, the large number of children processed resulted in inadequate time for each child/mother pair. Further study of quality levels of the examinations need to be performed.