Nursing ethics
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This study examines public health nurses' perceptions and concerns about the implications of Japan's new long-term care insurance law concerning care provision for elderly people and their families. Respondents voiced their primary concern about this law as access to services for all elderly people needing care, and defined their major responsibility as strengthening health promotion and illness prevention programmes. ⋯ They viewed their first function as developing collaborative relationships with local government officials to help to assure sufficient resources to provide the necessary foundation for long-term care programmes to deliver services to all those in need. These concerns fall within the larger ethical issue of distributive justice in a society based on the obligations of the state to citizens and the family to its members, especially elderly relatives, who, according to traditional Japanese values, retain respect.