Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the self-care education experience, self-care performance, and home care service needs of patients with rare and incurable diseases who use a home ventilator. Methods: From2 ventilator rental companies and 5 hospitals, records of 162 subjects were collected to obtain data regarding self-care education experience (23 items) and home care service needs (25 items). Results: Of the subjects, 65.4% were male and 55.6% had a myotrophic lateral sclerosis. The items with the highest and lowest levels of self-care education experience were "using the ventilator"(94.0%) and "community-available resource information"(27.0%), respectively. Meanwhile, self-care was performed well in terms of "personal hygiene"(59.6%) but not performed well in "community-available resource information"(23.7%). "Health status assessment" had the highest need(88.2%) of home care services. Generally, the need of home care services was higher for the patients using invasive ventilators than that for those using non-invasive ventilators. Conclusion: Home care nurses need to not only provide physical care for the patients but also strengthen their roles of enhancing patient access to and utilization of various community resources to provide systematic and individualized training and care.