Oita University of Nursing and Health Sciences was one of the first institutions in Japan to offer an undergraduate program of parallel instruction in both nursing science and general education throughout all four years of study. It is our belief that basic health and human sciences should be more closely integrated with nursing subjects to be more relevant to nursing curricula. Therefore, our general education program, which has been named the Health Sciences Program, offers health and human science courses heavily in the freshman and sophomore years of study as a broad foundation for the study of nursing. The Department of Health Sciences offers courses in the behavioral, biological, and environmental sciences, and in informatics, computer science, psychology, foreign languages, and physical education.

The three departments of nursing science, Basic Nursing, Clinical Nursing, and Public Health Nursing, offer instruction in the fundamentals, the specialty area practice, and the wider communal and international applications of nursing. As an integrated whole, the undergraduate program of instruction in nursing sciences balances rigorous academic learning with varied and intensive clinical experiences that provide competency and proficiency in clinical skills, patient care management, critical thinking, and decision making. In an effort to meet the needs of the future in health care, our university was the first in Japan to establish international nursing as an integral part of its undergraduate program, and the first to make nursing assessment into an independent area of research and instruction.

Clinical experiences in the undergraduate school begin in the freshman year and increase in length, intensity and variety each subsequent year. They allow students to experience the realities of nursing firsthand by coming into contact with places of actual nursing activities. Students have clinical experiences in fundamental nursing during their freshman and sophomore years, and in the various areas of clinical nursing from their junior and senior year of study. Our students have access to over 100 health care facilities throughout Oita Prefecture for practice. In addition, we have our own Clinical Instruction Center adjacent to Oita Prefectural Hospital, which is used during clinical practice at that hospital.

The undergraduate school is also characterized by several special educational programs. During the first semester of the freshman year, all students are required to take an eight-week Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) course in order to improve their English language abilities. They are also required to take the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) before and after the CALL course to measure their progress. During the second semester of their freshman year, students also undertake a concentrated study of biostatistics. During the second semester of their sophomore year, students do eight weeks of health science experiments in human biology, pathiobiology, physical fitness and sports sciences, and environmental health science.

During the second semester of their senior year, students have an eight-week Integrated Nursing Study course that integrates basic nursing education and technical nursing education so that they can master the nursing skills necessary to provide appropriate assessment and proper nursing care. This course is held in this period because senior-year students can make integrated judgments about nursing care after more than three years of classroom study, learning laboratory practice, and clinical experiences. This course consists of group work practices and roll-playing activities based on case studies of medical and nursing services. The course consists of three one-hour classes per week for eight weeks.

The culmination of the educational program in the undergraduate school is the graduation thesis project. At the end of their junior year, each student is affiliated with an academic division and appointed a thesis advisor from the faculty to oversee this research project. During their senior year of study, students are required to do research and write a graduation thesis. In order to fulfill the requirements for this research project, students are instructed in research methodology and report writing. After choosing a topic of research in consultation with their advisor, students are given a number of texts to read to acquire a general knowledge of the special field. As part of the research process, students are required to study original texts in English and seminars are conducted with oral reports and discussions of these readings in their affiliated division. Finally, students are required to make presentations of their research at a graduation thesis presentation where their research is evaluated by the assembled faculty.