• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.593-602
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• 2019

The healthcare industry, a high-value-added business, continues to grow with the aging of the population and the development of convergence medical technology. In particular, the medical tourism industry is being pushed by advanced countries. Korea is also actively supporting projects to attract international patients. However, there is a lack of prior research on Korea's medical interpreter policy. This study analyzes the current status and problems of medical interpreter policy for international patients, and presents the task. Problems include insufficient policy control towers, lack of links with local governments, lack of expertise of medical interpreters, poor quality of medical interpreting services, and poor treatment of medical interpreters. As improvement measures, it is proposed to establish a policy control tower, strengthen the link with local governments, switch to a medical interpreter system, diversify the language of medical interpreting qualification test, improve the quality of medical interpreting service, internalize the training process for medical interpreter, give preferential treatment to medical interpreters, utilize the nurse, and train multicultural medical personnel. I hope that this study will contribute to the development of the medical tourism industry.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.571-581
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• 2020

There are large, medium, and small items in the evaluation test for medical interpreter professionals personnel and the criteria and level are not clear, which may cause confusion for those preparing for the test. Therefore, we would like to suggest that the qualification requirements for the medical translation ability test and the criteria for the evaluation items are consistent with the medical system in Korea. The survey on the medical interpreter competency test conducted was collected from domestic and foreign data, compared with similar test and overseas test. We also examined the perception of the test by experts with experience in developing and interpreting the medical interpretation test. As a result, in the 'International Culture' evaluation category, 'Language-oriented culture' was changed to 'Medical-oriented culture' and 'Interpretation ethics' was changed to 'Medical interpretation ethics'. In the evaluation items of the hospital system, the 'Medical Dispute Mediation Act', which is 「ACT ON MEDIATION OF MEDICAL DISPUTES」 of the middle item was changed the 「ACT ON REMEDIES FOR INJURIES FROM MEDICAL MALPRACTICE AND MEDIATION OF MEDICAL DISPUTES」 and the Act also reduced the four items related to the 'Medical Tourism Law' to two and added the 「ACT ON SUPPORTING THE ADVANCEMENT OF MEDICAL OVERSEAS AND ATTRACTING FOREIGN PATIENTS」. If the Medical Interpretation Proficiency Test is prepared in accordance with the medical culture of Korea, it is expected that there will be a stable opportunity for professionals who pass the examination to act as experts.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.391-397
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• 2014

This paper is concerned with medical tourism, which is expected to become the new growth engine of the 21st century. Medical tourism is a collaborative and synergistic composition of Healthcare and Tourism, and has led to a remarkable growth in 2012 since the year 2009, exhibiting huge growth potential. This paper reviews the emerging market of the medical tourism with five major hospitals in Korea from the perspective of medical tourists, and makes suggestions for the global health care and the sustainable development in Korean medical tourism as a growth market: the construction of websites for active services and transparent management of medical expenses with proper arrangement of medical consulting and advices, cooperation of the health care center and the medical tourism industry, and the activation of healthcare communication. For the smooth progress of medical tourism, this paper suggests two separate communication channels: one for the patient tourists and the other for the medical tourism coordinators. The former needs accuracy with professional knowledge on the healthcare and communication, which should be classified as medical interpreters working with disease-oriented medical tourists. The latter refers to international medical coordinators dedicated to the smooth progress of medical tourism and services. This paper also points out the creative efforts to improve the relatively poor infrastructure of tourism industry to accommodate the medical tourists, and improve the medical tourism industry.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.443-451
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the views of dental hygiene students about the possible countermeasure of domestic hospitals for the opening of the medical market. The subjects in this study were 269 dental hygiene sophomores, juniors and seniors at two different colleges in the region of Busan. The findings of the study were as follows: The opening of the medical market and views of possible countermove, whether they agreed to that or not made a statistically significant difference to their opinions on the necessity of customer-oriented marketing strategy(p=0.023), analysis of foreign medical markets/attempt to make inroads into the markets(p<0.000) and the improvement of the quality of medical services/the diversification of the services(p=0.025). As to an intention of going to a foreign hospital, they had a statistically significantly different intention about whether to go to a foreign hospital regardless of medical bills(p<0.000), whether to consult a doctor in a foreign hospital after going to a domestic hospital first (p<0.000), whether to consider the distance between their houses and a foreign hospital(p=0.05) and whether to take considerations on the assistance of an interpreter(p=0.023). In regard to preference for foreign hospitals, American hospitals ranked first(41.9), followed by Australian hospitals(19.9) and Canadian ones(14.2).