• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.288-302
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• 2022

Objective: Community pharmacists are frontline health care providers, but have been considered as underutilized professionals on a daily basis. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify information about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on community pharmacy services and to evaluate new services that could be applicable. Methods: We searched MEDLINE and EMBASE for studies published up to January 10, 2020. Search terms consisted of keywords relevant to this review, including "COVID-19", "community pharmacy", and "community pharmacist". This review targeted studies of pharmacist services provided by community pharmacies in OECD member countries during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Results: Twenty-seven studies were included in this review. Changes in community pharmacist services due to the COVID-19 pandemic were broadly classified into four categories. First, as the face-to-face services became challenging, various non-face-to-face services were being tried. Second, community pharmacists directly participated in the services to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Third, community pharmacists made efforts to support continuity of care for patients who experienced difficulties due to the reduced professional care as health and medical resources are concentrated in response to COVID-19. Fourth, community pharmacist services were emerging, targeting patients suffering from greater health inequality during the pandemic. Patients expressed high demand and satisfaction for the service of the community pharmacist, and pharmacists reported self-efficacy and professional pride. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, various community pharmacist services have been tried and received positive evaluations from patients in several OECD countries.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.180-189
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• 2023

Objectives: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a global shortage of medical resources; therefore, we investigated whether COVID-19 impacted the quality of non-COVID-19 hospital care in Korea by comparing hospital standardized mortality rates (HSMRs) before and during the pandemic. Methods: This retrospective cohort study analyzed Korean National Health Insurance discharge claim data obtained from January to June in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Patients' in-hospital deaths were classified according to the most responsible diagnosis categories. The HSMR is calculated as the ratio of expected deaths to actual deaths. The time trend in the overall HSMR was analyzed by region and hospital type. Results: The final analysis included 2 252 824 patients. In 2020, the HSMR increased nationwide (HSMR, 99.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 97.7 to 101.0) in comparison to 2019 (HSMR, 97.3; 95% CI, 95.8 to 98.8). In the COVID-19 pandemic zone, the HSMR increased significantly in 2020 (HSMR, 112.7; 95% CI, 107.0 to 118.7) compared to 2019 (HSMR, 101.7; 95% CI, 96.9 to 106.6). The HSMR in all general hospitals increased significantly in 2020 (HSMR, 106.4; 95% CI, 104.3 to 108.5) compared to 2019 (HSMR, 100.3; 95% CI, 98.4 to 102.2). Hospitals participating in the COVID-19 response had a lower HSMR (HSMR, 95.6; 95% CI, 93.9 to 97.4) than hospitals not participating in the COVID-19 response (HSMR, 124.3; 95% CI, 119.3 to 129.4). Conclusions: This study suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may have negatively impacted the quality of care in hospitals, especially general hospitals with relatively few beds. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to prevent excessive workloads in hospitals and to properly employ and coordinate the workforce.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.67-75
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• 2022

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have introduced remote work. However, the introduction of remote work has increased attacks on companies to access sensitive information, and many companies have begun to use cloud services to respond to security threats. This study used LDA topic modeling techniques by collecting news data with the keyword 'cloud security' to analyze changes in domestic cloud security trends before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in domestic cloud security was low, so representation or association could not be found in the extracted topics. However, it was analyzed that the introduction of cloud is necessary for high computing performance for AI, IoT, and blockchain, which are IT technologies that are currently being studied. On the other hand, looking at topics extracted after the COVID-19 pandemic, it was confirmed that interest in the cloud increased in Korea, and accordingly, interest in cloud security improved. Therefore, security measures should be established to prepare for the ever-increasing usage of cloud services.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.1150-1160
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• 2020

Objective: To describe the experience of implementing a deep learning-based computer-aided detection (CAD) system for the interpretation of chest X-ray radiographs (CXR) of suspected coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients and investigate the diagnostic performance of CXR interpretation with CAD assistance. Materials and Methods: In this single-center retrospective study, initial CXR of patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 were investigated. A commercialized deep learning-based CAD system that can identify various abnormalities on CXR was implemented for the interpretation of CXR in daily practice. The diagnostic performance of radiologists with CAD assistance were evaluated based on two different reference standards: 1) real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) results for COVID-19 and 2) pulmonary abnormality suggesting pneumonia on chest CT. The turnaround times (TATs) of radiology reports for CXR and rRT-PCR results were also evaluated. Results: Among 332 patients (male:female, 173:159; mean age, 57 years) with available rRT-PCR results, 16 patients (4.8%) were diagnosed with COVID-19. Using CXR, radiologists with CAD assistance identified rRT-PCR positive COVID-19 patients with sensitivity and specificity of 68.8% and 66.7%, respectively. Among 119 patients (male:female, 75:44; mean age, 69 years) with available chest CTs, radiologists assisted by CAD reported pneumonia on CXR with a sensitivity of 81.5% and a specificity of 72.3%. The TATs of CXR reports were significantly shorter than those of rRT-PCR results (median 51 vs. 507 minutes; p < 0.001). Conclusion: Radiologists with CAD assistance could identify patients with rRT-PCR-positive COVID-19 or pneumonia on CXR with a reasonably acceptable performance. In patients suspected with COVID-19, CXR had much faster TATs than rRT-PCRs.

• Journal of Korean Biological Nursing Science
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.240-249
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• 2024

Purpose: This study aimed to identify factors associated with nurses' vaccination acceptance in the initial stage of coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination in Korea. Methods: This cross-sectional study collected data from hospital-level or higher medical institutions from May 5 to May 7, 2021 with a total of 368 nurses via an online survey. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with vaccination acceptance. Results: The acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination had an average score of 4.28 ± 0.80 out of 7 points. Among the sub-areas of acceptance, the safety of the vaccine exhibited the lowest score (average, 2.80 ± 0.83). The factors related to COVID-19 vaccination acceptance in nurses were age (over 40 compared to under 29) (β = .16, p = .008), experience (more than 11 years compared to under 5) (β = .16, p = .010), the absence of a preferred vaccine (β = -.14, p = .004), and educational background (a master's degree or higher compared to a bachelor's degree or lower) (β = .12, p = .042). Conclusion: In the initial stage of COVID-19 vaccination, nurses believed that the COVID-19 vaccine was important and that people should be vaccinated, but had concerns regarding the safety of the vaccine. Older age, more experience, the absence of a preferred vaccine, and a higher educational background were associated with higher acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination. Therefore, more active education on the necessity and value of vaccination for young people is required at the individual and socio-cultural level, and a sufficient supply of preferred vaccines at the national level is needed.

• Journal of Medicine and Life Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.33-40
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• 2020

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory tract infection caused by a newly emergent coronavirus, that was first recognized in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Genetic sequencing of the virus suggests that it is a beta coronavirus closely linked to the SARS virus. This disease has non-specific symptoms such as fever, dry cough, sore throat, and gastrointestinal symptoms. This virus can transmit via aerosol and need to droplet precaution to prevent spreading in public areas. Most people with COVID-19 develop only mild or uncomplicated illness. However, about 20% patients require hospitalization, oxygen supply, and intensive care. There is no currently effective treatment available for COVID-19 unresponsive to supportive care. This is review about the recently published epidemiologic, and clinical features, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of COVID-19.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.164-170
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• 2020

Recently, the aviation industry faced a major crisis due to the impact of COVID-19. However, despite the sluggish passenger transportation, the cargo transportation sector is relatively maintained or increasing depending on the item. In this study, we will look at the trends before and after COVID-19, focusing on the cargo export field, which is a concern of the aviation industry. First, it analyzes the entire air cargo and then analyzes the trends of each item and country in detail. In particular, it examines the process of changes in air transport costs, which increased significantly immediately after COVID-19, and conducts future trends and prospects in the cargo export field. As a result of the study, some characteristics of air cargo exports before and after COVID-19 were found in an analysis by item and country, and transportation costs varied according to route distance.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.25.1-25.5
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• 2021

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a flood of research papers and the information has been updated with considerable frequency. For society to derive benefits from this research, it is necessary to promote sharing up-to-date knowledge from these papers. However, because most research papers are written in English, it is difficult for people who are not familiar with English medical terms to obtain knowledge from them. To facilitate sharing knowledge from COVID-19 papers written in English for Japanese speakers, we tried to construct a dictionary with an open license by assigning Japanese terms to MeSH unique identifiers (UIDs) annotated to words in the texts of COVID-19 papers. Using this dictionary, 98.99% of all occurrences of MeSH terms in COVID-19 papers were covered. We also created a curated version of the dictionary and uploaded it to Pub-Dictionary for wider use in the PubAnnotation system.

• The Journal of KAIRB
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.33-36
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• 2020

In December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was discovered in Wuhan, China. The disease was so severe that as early as 30 January 2020 COVID-19 was declared by WHO as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. There have been a lot of concerns about conducting COVID-19 clinical researches scientifically and ethically in pandemic. This article is directed at addressing these issues from the perspective of IRB. First of all, the urgency of COVID-19 research requires prompt IRB process through efficient ethics review and oversight system. IRB should determine whether the risks that will be presented to human subjects are justified after assessing possible harm and anticipated benefits. The safety of subjects should not be compromised. Furthermore, informed consent should be voluntarily obtained by sufficient information in consideration of special circumstances during a pandemic.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.432-442
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• 2022

This study aimed to investigate depression, fatigue, and role-overload in nurses caring for COVID-19 patients and identify factors affecting depression. Data were collected from 142 nurses caring for COVID-19 patients at four designated COVID-19 hospitals using self-report questionnaires, from September 8, 2020, to September 17, 2020. The subjects' scores for depression, fatigue, and role-overload were 14.51±9.54, 3.19±0.64, and 3.30±0.64 points, respectively. Depression was positively correlated with fatigue (r=.40, p<.001) and role-overload (r=.30, p<.001), and fatigue was positively correlated with role-overload (r=.54, p<.001). Factors affecting depression included fatigue (β=.23, p=.014), health status (moderate: β=.28, p=.001; unhealthy: β=.26, p=.002), and hospital type (university hospital: β=.18, p=.024). The explanatory power (R²) of the model was 28.1%. In order to manage the nurse's depression level, a strategy for lowering the fatigue level and a strategy for improving the nurse's health statue are needed.