Response to the Model Core Curriculum for Nursing Education and Future Outlook | Tomoko Nagata, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care

Currently, the faculty members of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care are deeply troubled, staring at a single Excel file. To be specific, we need to introduce the "Model Core Curriculum for Nursing Education," the so-called "Model Core Curriculum," for which a revised version was announced by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology at the end of the last fiscal year. As the first step, we have begun the task of inspecting our current educational content, but this is proving to be a far more difficult undertaking than imagined.

Nursing education in Japan has a long history of being implemented as "content-based education" based on the "Designation Rules for Public Health Nurse, Midwife, and Nurse Training Schools" promulgated in 1949. However, with the spread of nursing education at universities and rapid changes in the healthcare delivery system, there has been a strong demand for "nursing practice abilities"—the ability to make appropriate judgments and responses according to the situation in diverse clinical settings. In response to this trend, the first Model Core Curriculum for Nursing Education was formulated in 2017, incorporating all educational content stipulated in the designation rules.

Furthermore, in light of advancements in science and technology and increasingly complex social conditions, the ideal image of the human resources that nursing education should aim for has also evolved. There is now a demand for individuals who can set their own challenges, utilize logical thinking and global communication skills to create new value and visions, and possess the qualities and abilities to actively improve society. Additionally, a shift toward "learner-centered education" has been proposed across higher education as a whole, making it essential to visualize the learning outcomes of individual students. As you may know, this has made the transition from traditional content-based education to "competency-based education," which emphasizes the achievement level of abilities, indispensable.

Based on these major trends, a new competency-based Model Core Curriculum was announced in 2025. This curriculum integrally organizes the competencies—knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values—required of students in the Bachelor of Nursing program. Furthermore, as outcome evaluations, the points of achievement at the time of graduation and at the start of clinical practice just prior to graduation have been clearly specified. For the future, a path toward "participatory clinical practice," in which students are more proactively involved, has also been presented to make clinical practice more meaningful and practical.

Looking at it this way, it is clear that responding to the Model Core Curriculum is a requirement of the times and a challenge that the university should take the lead in addressing. However, the task of cross-referencing actual ongoing educational content with the vast list of 756 items of qualities and abilities presented by the Model Core Curriculum, and precisely confirming in which subjects and how they are taught and how the learner's achievement level is evaluated, is by no means easy.

For example, taking the home-care nursing-related subjects I am in charge of, items such as "understanding social resources to be utilized for the health issues of home-care recipients and their families" and "understanding nursing methods based on differences in living environments and regional characteristics and being able to draft support plans" are the core parts of home-care nursing, and the correspondence is clear. However, qualities and abilities related to "understanding families" and "interprofessional collaboration" are listed across multiple areas within the curriculum, requiring us to read through a vast number of items and grasp their relationships.

In terms of evaluating achievement levels, it is also necessary to consider a stepwise evaluation axis: "Does," "Shows how," "Knows how," and "Knows." In reality, even for items that should originally be evaluated at the "Does" or "Shows how" level, there are cases where we are forced to limit evaluation to written exams at the "Knows how" or "Knows" level due to time and personnel constraints. How to bridge that gap is also a major challenge.

In this way, facing the Model Core Curriculum list, each faculty member continues to work through trial and error regarding the inspection of their own educational content and future prospects. Moving forward, based on the inspection results of individual subjects, we face the full-scale task of identifying educational content that should be further strengthened as a whole faculty and incorporating it into the actual curriculum.

As the content to be learned diversifies and the standards required for nursing education continue to rise, how can we build an ideal curriculum while ensuring the university's individuality and the freedom of each student? It seems the days of being deeply troubled will not end anytime soon. However, under the strong leadership of the members of the Curriculum Committee, I intend to continue working persistently to build a higher-quality educational system characteristic of Keio Nursing.