Message from the President

St. Luke's College of Nursing
Toshiko Ibe
President

Since its foundation, St. Luke's College of Nursing has endeavored to be a place for professionals in nursing to pursue deeper wisdom and to continually grow as experts. With this goal, the College has contributed to the development of nursing science and responded to the needs of our society through education and research. In 2003, St. Luke's was designated as a "21st Century Center of Excellence Program" by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Technology. This designation allowed us to further advance "nursing practice from the perspective of the person," which we have been striving to bring to fruition.

St. Luke's College of Nursing 21st Century COE Program, "Nursing for People-centered Initiatives in Healthcare and Health Promotion" has a paradigm shift in nursing science in its scope. The core of the program is nursing practice development research that focuses on issues with a need to be urgently addressed by medicine in present-day society: advanced medicine and nursing; coping with disease and nursing; and, current issues and nursing. The program also aims to accumulate and disseminate worldwide, health information useful for the capacity building of individuals to become active in managing their own well-being.

We have encouraged all faculty members and graduate students to participate in the international symposia, and the Evaluation Committee and others to make the program a college-wide enterprise. Our attempt has lead to the extraction of fundamental factors in nursing necessary to implement people-centered initiatives in healthcare.

Such program activities, for the last 2 years, have galvanized our faculty members as well as graduate students into further research activities. Various findings and awareness, acquired through these activities, are put into practice in the Nursing Practice Development Research Center. The center has already succeeded in promoting a new perspective in the community, where nursing practice, based on partnership between nurses and people/patients, results in the capacity building of people to deal with their own health problems; nurses and the general public are perceived as partners for enhancing health. We have recognized a new facet of "nursing as a solution for people/patients" (i.e., nursing as a key to dealing with health problems of the general public).

In life, we go through "birth, aging, disease, and death". Nurses are to provide support going through such experiences to help us enjoy and appreciate life to the fullest. St. Luke's College of Nursing 21st Century COE Program endeavors to fulfill this principle based on input from lay people, experts and the like. We look forward to and greatly appreciate your contributions.