In times of disaster, nursing professionals are expected to play an important role in life-threatening or health-endangering situations. This has generated an increasing level of interest on training nursing professionals on disaster nursing and disaster response.

To be prepared for disasters, not only are disaster planning and advanced disaster-prevention systems necessary, making sure the availability of human resources capable of executing the plan and operating these systems is also critical. However, the ability for a director of nursing department in the event of a disaster have mostly remained undetermined. The project on nursing management method development has just started this year. A study is underway in 2006 to examine the disaster nursing ability needed by a director of nursing department in times of disaster. Most directors of nursing department who had gone through a disaster likely had to come up with their own ingenuity or wisdom to deal with the disaster situation. To find out what kind of abilities are needed by a director of nursing department in the event of a disaster, the project is presently examining what these directors of nursing saw and heard, what went through their minds, and what decisions were made when dealing with the disaster.

The group conducted an on-site survey of the Niigata-Chuetsu Earthquake.
All facilities that the group visited in this survey were located near the major active faults, including some located in zones where active tectonic activities are still taking place. The damages sustained, however, varied from one zone to another. The group was able to meet with a director of nursing who spoke  the difficulty in carrying out disaster nursing activities in the various suffering situation, also she was a disaster victim herself.