Exposure to natural hazards, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and flooding, is something shared between Japan and the Philippines. Japan has shown success in building resilience and disaster risk management. One area of interest is the system for dispatching nurses to care for disaster survivors which shows the importance of the nursing workforce in disaster management.
The variety of learning opportunities I experienced here which included attendance to lectures in the classroom or through video conference, observation of the consultation service offered in the Town Healthcare Room, interaction with graduate students and nursing faculty members, and the interview with Japanese nurse leaders highlighted the efforts towards both academic excellence and collaboration. Visits to Memorial Exhibition Centers not only featured the tragedy and effect of previous disasters in Japan, but presented as well the hope and learning nurtured for and by the people. The site visit to a Community Center in a Temporary Housing location highlighted the collaborative efforts of people and agencies towards compassionate care and people development.
The various opportunities afforded by this fellowship program allowed me not only to understand the systems and processes in the field of disaster management, particularly in the area of disaster support nurse program and capacity-building of nurse volunteers for the program, but also in experiencing the significance of all these efforts from the classroom lectures, to the community center activities, and memorial museums. From the nursing perspective, the Philippines can learn a lot to better prepare its nurses to engage in a proactive stance towards disaster in all its phases through a more relevant and improved capacity-building program and formulation of policies in organizing nurse volunteers and on nurse deployment or dispatch in disaster response and rehabilitation.
Through the WHO Collaborating Centers of the two countries, particularly the Research Institute of Nursing Care for People and Community (University of Hyogo) and the College of Nursing (University of the Philippines Manila), further engagement in Disaster Nursing can be forged through collaborative research and capacity-building. A number of nursing research has been done on disaster and post-disaster management, but literature shows a concentration on specific topics while others are limited to description of activities and events. This provides an opportunity to engage in collaborative research to obtain scientific evidence to support policies for a more responsive and effective nursing disaster management.
