Manami Takaoka

Dr. Manami Takaoka’s research interests are in long-term care for older adults. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, she has studied constipation care for older adults in long-term care facilities.

For her master’s thesis, she conducted a questionnaire survey examining constipation care and related factors in more than 1,000 long-term care hospitals. and then analyzed the data quantitatively and qualitatively. For her doctoral dissertation, she studied the conditions of constipation care in special nursing homes. In order to examine the relationship between  use of laxatives and the defecation status, she statistically analyzed assessment data from interRAI instruments. In order to understand the processes of constipation care she  interviewed nurses and care workers in special nursing homes, and analyzed the data using the Grounded Theory Approach. From her previous studies she found that nurses in long-term care facilities need to proactively implement constipation care, such as laxative adjustments according to the condition of the older adults. However, they have difficulties providing this proactive care in the absence of specific guidelines. Therefore, she plans to help establish effective and specific constipation care methods that are appropriate for the specific conditions of the patients.