The purpose of this one group pre and post test study was to evaluate the effect of self-help programs(SHP) which has been conducted from 1997 to 2000. The SHP was held by Korean Rheumatology Health Professionals Society(KRHP) once a week for 6 weeks for chronic arthritis patients in Korea. Eight hundred fifty five subjects completed the program at 43 sites. The effect of SHP were evaluated by flexibility, pain, activities of daily living(ADL), fatigue, depression and self-efficacy. After SHP, followings were found: 1. Participants' characteristics of SHP were most common in living in Seoul, women, sixties, high school graduates, house wifes, osteoarthritis, completed in 1999. 2. The flexibility of arm, knee, ankle joint were significantly increased, but the flexibility of the shoulder was not changed. 3. Level of pain was decreased significantly from 5.21 to 3.99, and the number of painful joints were decreased from 4.96 to 4.18 significantly. 4. The score of ADL was increased from 53.74 to 54.97 significantly. 5. The score of depression and self-efficacy was not changed. In conclusion, SHP was clearly proved to be an effective nursing intervention to Increase the flexibility of arm, knee, ankle joint and enhanced ADL. Also SHP decreased pain and fatigue. More research is needed to determine the role of self-efficacy and depression in the SHP, use of a randomized design and longer follow up period to understand more about the effects of the program.

Introduction : Exercise has been suggested as an important nursing strategy in which to help elderly maintain functional performance and to enhanced quality of life. Most of exercise study has been reported on fitness exercise such as walking, swimming, dance etc for health of elderly. There have been few reports about exercise on the promotion of small and fine movement of elderly. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine an effect of 6 weeks hand and finger exercise in home to improve hand muscle strength such as grip strength and finger pinch pressure. Materials and Methods Design: This pilot study was used one group pre and post-test design. Sample: Twelve elderly women above 60 years of age or older living in community were selected by convenient sampling. Procedure: Signed informed consent was obtained prior to participate in this study. The authors met elderly and taught hand and finger exercise, daily a week for 6 weeks, within 30 minutes per session. But exercise frequency and strength were not same. Instruments: Left and right grip strength were measured by Bulb Dynamometer(made in USA) and left and right pinch pressure were measured by Baseline Hydraulic Pinch Gauge(made in USA). Data analysis: Discriptive data analyses were performed on all variables. Wilcoxon matched-pairs Signed-Ranks test were used to find difference of grip strength and pinch pressure between pre and post exercise using SPSS 10.0 for Window. Results: Samples age ranged from 60 to 73, Mean age was 65.3. All were women. Ten elderly were diagnosed osteoarthritis and one had DM. After six weeks hand and finger exercise, Left and right grip strength were higher than those of before exercise(Z=-2.667, P<0.01 ; Z=-3.065, p<0.01). And left pinch pressure after hand and linger exercise were higher than that of before pinch pressure (Z=-2.315, p<0.05). But Right pinch pressure was not shown significant change(Z=-1.099, p>0.05). Conclusions: Although this study was limited by the sample size and design, the findings provide some important implications for community based exercise nursing intervention. Short term (six weeks) exercise of hand and linger is shown to be useful as nursing intervention to maintain routine daily activities such as eating, writing, grip something for elderly.

Objective. The 12 forms of Sun-style Tai Chi exercise has been developed specifically for arthritis patients in order to reduce their symptoms and to improve physical functioning. This quasi-experimental study examined the changes in pain, balance, muscle strength and physical functioning in women with osteoarthritis at the completion of the 12 week Tai Chi exercise program. Methods. The patients with osteoarthritis who signed the consent form were screened by their primary physician according to the inclusion criteria and invited to the study. Total of 66 osteoarthritis women with an average age of 63 years were participated in the Tai Chi exercise. At the completion of 12 weeks, 34 patients completed both pretest and posttest measures with 48% of overall dropout rate. Outcome measures were physical symptoms, balance, muscle strength, physical functioning, and depression. Paired t-test was utilized to examine differences between pre and post-measures. Results. After participating in the Tai Chi exercise program, the women with osteoarthritis showed significant improvements in their physical fitness measures, and consequently in their physical functioning. In physical fitness test, there were significant improvements in balance, flexibility, muscle strengths of knee, grip, and back muscles after the Tai Chi exercise. However, No significant differences were found in pain and stiffness of their knee joints and depression measure. Conclusion. The 12 forms of Tai Chi exercise has been found safely applicable to the older women with osteoarthritis for 12 weeks, and effective in improving balance, flexibility, and muscle strengths, and consequently lessening difficulties of performing their activities of daily life.

This study was conducted to describe disease characteristics, psycho-social factors and treatment behavior of patients with lupus and to analyze relationships anions these variables. The subjects were consisted of 120 lupus patients at G university hospital in Seoul. Data were collected by means of structured interview with questionnaires, and analyzed by using frequencies, $x^2$test, t-test, ANOVA, and correlation. The results were as follows; 1. The average age of the subjects was 31.34 years and average duration of suffering lupus was about 7.3years. Severity of symptoms was moderate and the disturbance of living activities was at the very low level. 2. Self-efficacy score of lupus patients was high, and life satisfaction was at moderate level. 3. Dosage for most of the subjects was about twice a day. 16.7% of them took non-prescribed medicine and only 27.5% perform exercise. 4. Positive correlation was shown among symptom, discomfort of living activities, self-efficacy and life satisfaction, while there was negative correlation among symptom and self-efficacy, symptom and life satisfaction, discomfort of living activities and self-efficacy, and discomfort of living activities and life satisfaction. In addition, exercise showed significant relationship with discomfort of living activities, and non-prescribed medicine showed significant relationship with discomfort of living activities and self-efficacy. These results show that lupus is a chronic disease of long suffering duration among young people. Severity of the symptom was at modest level, while discomfort of living activities were relatively insignificant. However self-efficacy was relatively high. Furthermore self-efficacy has influences on symptom and discomfort of life activities, just as exercise affects discomfort of life activities. Therefore it is required to examine further measures for continuous exercise.

Osteoporosis is a age-related metabolic disorder. Currently there is no cure, but there are measures that can prevent or deter the development of osteoporosis. Futhermore lifestyle among risk factors of osteoporosis may be modifiable. Osteoporotic preventive health promotion behavior may be more effective at early adult when make formation of peak bone mass. The purpose of this study was to identify of relation between the demographic variable, osteoporosis-related lifestyles and the health promotion behavior of University and College Female Students. The results were followed: 1. Demographic variables according to the health promotion behavior were significantly difference with age, body height, religion and income. 2. Osteoporosis-related lifestyles according to the health promotion behavior were significantly difference with element school milk intake, current milk intake, exercise and caffeine intake. 3. Health promotion behavior was positively correlation with age, body weight, height income, element school and current milk intake and exercise.

Arthritis patients living in a rural town are thought to have more problems in terms of life stress, social support, and depression than those living in an urban city. But there were few studies which investigated the status of arthritis patients living in a rural town. This study investigated how much life stress they got, which life events were perceived as stress, what kind of social support were most perceived, and how much they were depressed. Fifty six arthritis patients were surveyed using structured questionnaire. Life stress, social support, and depression were assessed using the following scales: Life changes scale, Duke's short scale to measure social support, and CES-D(Center for Epidemiologic Study- Depression), respectively. They were found to perceive life stress in home-work, health and work, in order. And they were found to perceive relatively good social support. But they sot most of social support from their family members especially their spouses and children. Lastly, it was found that they were moderately depressed. Based upon these results, it is suggested that integrative rehabilitation programs which provide professional support and reduce depression are necessary for arthritis patients living in rural towns.