• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.210-228
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• 2002

Background: The purpose of this research was to examine the fall incidence rate and its related factors of fall in inpatients. Methods: The data were collected from the 138 fall incident reports in one tertiary hospital in Seoul from April 1st 1999 to September 30th 2001. The Fall Incident Report Form was originally developed based on that of Massachusetts General Hospital revised in 1995. And this was modified for this survey by the collaborating work of QI team including researcher and department of nursing service of this particular hospital. The contents of Fall Incident Form were general characteristics of patient. factors related to fall. types and places of fall. circumstances, nursing interventions. and outcome. Results: 1) The incidence rate of fall was 0.08% of total discharged patients and 0.081 per 1000 patient-day. This incidence rate is much lower than that of several hospitals in USA. This finding might result from the different incidence report system of each hospital. 2) The characteristics of fall-prone patient were found as follows. They were mostly over 60 years old, in alert mental status, ambulatory with some assistance, and dependent on ambulatory device. The types of diseases related high incidence rate were cerebrovascular disease(3.2), hypertension(1.6), cardiovascular disease(1.4), diabetes(1.3) and liver disease(0.6). 3) The majority of fall events usually occurred m bed. bedside(walking or standing) and bathroom in patient room. Usually they were up on their own when they fell. And there were more falls of elderly occurred during night time than day or evening. 4) 63.8% of fall events resulted in physical injuries such as fracture and usually the patients had diagnostic procedures and some treatment(ex. suture) which caused additional cost to the patients and their families. 5) The found risk factors of fall were drugs(antihypertensive drug, diuretics) and environmental factors like too high bed height, long distance of bedside table and lamp switch, and slippery tile of bathroom floor. Conclusion: Considering these results, every medical and nursing staff should be aware of the risk factors of patients in hospital, and should intervene more actively the preventive managements, specially for the elderly patients during night. Therefore, it is recommended that the development of Fall Prevention Programs based on these results.

• 한국노년학
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.1293-1309
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• 2010

This study is aimed to evaluate the effects of community-based prehabilitation program developed to prevent functional decline in the frail elderly and to provide a basis to practically operate this program in the public health care service. From March to August 2009, 110 frail elderly people were recruited among the registered participants of the home visit program in Korea to perform a prospective randomized community trial. We randomly assigned these people into two groups. One group (n=50) participated in the visiting prehabilitation program for 3 months focusing on improving their muscle strength of upper and lower limbs, walking ability, and balancing. The other group (n=60) underwent our visiting fall prevention program for control. To assess the effectiveness of prehabilitation program, physical functioning (PF) and short physical performance battery (SPPB) were measured for the primary outcomes and also some other indicators: exercise performance, nutritional status, emotional functioning, experience of admission, and events of fall. As a result, significant improvements of geriatric functional status were noticed among the participants. After 3 months, PF increased by 1.3 ± 3.8 points in prehabilitation group and decreased by 1.1 ± 5.4 points in controls (p=.020). SPPB improved by 2.4 ± 2.0 points in prehabilitation group and increased only 0.3 ± 1.5 points in controls (p<.001). Significant effects were also shown in their exercise performance tests and emotional status, the number of multiple falls, and the experience of functional decline after the fall (p .002-.038). Visiting prehabilitation program is safe and effective program for frail older adults. Thus, it is strongly recommended to universally adopt this program to prevent functional decline in the frail elderly.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.331-336
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• 2018

Oral health is an essential requirement for maintaining and promoting health and quality of life while aging. It is known that there is a deep connection with hygienic management of dentures. However, despite the emphasis on the importance of clean management of dentures, there is a lack of quantitative research on denture-related detergents. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate food stain removal performance of three denture cleansers containing proteolytic enzymes. In addition, this study provides basic data on self-cleaning methods using detergents and suggests ways to improve effective treatment for oral health of elders in domiciliary care. In order to obtain quantitative data concerning food stain removal performance of each proteinase denture cleaner, the test evaluation method proposed by the Korean Consumer Agency, ISO 20795, was used. A total of 18 specimens were discolored for 48 hours in water dissolved with turmeric, and then washed with each denture cleaner for 24 hours. The cleaned denture specimens were measured quantitatively using a spectrophotometer to measure the color values of the denture specimens before the discoloration as well as the color values of the discolored specimens after cleaning with the denture cleanser. The experimental values were analyzed through one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Tukey's test, and statistically significant differences were found among the experimental groups. It was found that C had statistically significant stain removal performance compared with A and B(p<.05). All experiments were conducted for a total of 21 days, from July 3- 23, 2017. This study confirms that denture cleansers is a beneficial self-denture management method for domiciliary seniors. Therefore, it is necessary to extend accessibility for denture cleansers in order to to optimize domiciliary care for elderly oral hygiene and health.

• Korean Journal of Adult Nursing
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.17-29
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of depression on older adults' metamemory and memory performances. The subjects of the study consisted of 103 older adults over the age of 60 who are living in Kangwon Province. Some data were collected by means of the interview method, using questionnaires for metamemory (MIA questionnaire by Hultsch, et al., 1988), and depression(GDS by Yesavage and Sheikl, 1986). Other data were collected by a testing method on the memory performance, such as the immediate word recall task, the delayed word recall task, the word recognition task(Elderly Verbal Learning Test by Kyung Mi Choi, 1998), and the face recognition task(Face Recognition Task tool developed by this study). The results of this study were as follows: 1) The average point of depressed older persons' metamemory is 3.2 on a 5 point scale and was significantly lower than nondepressed older persons' point of 3.6. Looking into each sub-concept of metamemory, depressed persons' points are higher in terms of task(4.1), but are lower in terms of change(2.3), locus(2.6), and strategy(2.9) in comparison with nondepressed persons' points. 2) Depressed older persons' memory performances are all significantly lower than nondepressed person's, especially in terms of face recognition task(t=7.26, p<.0082) and word recognition task(t=6.58, p<.01). 3) In both depressed and nondepressed persons, metamemory has a close correlation with all memory tasks. In particular, depressed older persons' correlation is higher across the board, especially in memory self-efficacy of metamemory(r=.36 - .49) in comparison with nondepressed persons. 4) According to the results of analysis on the relations between metamemory and memory performances of each memory task using canonical analysis, in the case of depressed older persons, strategy, locus, capability and task have high correlation with word recognition task and delayed word recall task. Also in the case of nondepressed persons, achievement, strategy, change and locus variable have high correlation with face recognition task and immediate word recall task. As mentioned above, depression variables have a negative effect on older persons' metamemory and memory performance. In conclusion, when we care for depressed older persons with less memory ability, we have to consider the outcomes of this study are relevant. In addition, it is necessary to develop nursing intervention in order to prevent memory loss and improve memory performance in depressed older persons.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.27-33
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• 2023

Demands for eco-friendly food materials are increasing rapidly because of increased interest in well-being and health care, deterioration of air quality due to fine dust, and various soil and water pollution. Aquaponics is a system that can solve various problems such as economic activities, environmental problems, and safe food provision of the elderly population. However, techniques for deriving the optimal growth environment should be preceded. In this paper, we intend to design an intelligent plant growth measurement system that considers the characteristics of existing aquaponics. In particular, we would like to propose a module configuration plan for learning data and judgment systems when providing a uniform growth environment, focusing on designing systems suitable for production sites that do not have high-performance processing resources among intelligent aquaponics production management modules. It is believed that the proposed system can effectively perform deep learning with small analysis resources.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.137-144
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• 2020

Delirium is among the most common mental disorders encountered in patients with a temporary cognitive impairment such as consciousness disorder, attention disorder, and poor speech, particularly among those who are older. Delirium is distressing for patients and families, can interfere with the management of symptoms such as pain, and is associated with increased elderly mortality. The purpose of this paper is to generate useful clinical knowledge that can be used to distinguish the outcomes of patients with delirium in long-term care facilities. For this purpose, we extracted the clinical classification knowledge associated with delirium using a local covering rule acquisition approach with the rough lower approximation region. The clinical applicability of the proposed method was verified using data collected from a prospective cohort study. From the results of this study, we found six useful clinical pieces of evidence that the duration of delirium could more than 12 days. Also, we confirmed eight factors such as BMI, Charlson Comorbidity Index, hospitalization path, nutrition deficiency, infection, sleep disturbance, bed scores, and diaper use are important in distinguishing the outcomes of delirium patients. The classification performance of the proposed method was verified by comparison with three benchmarking models, ANN, SVM with RBF kernel, and Random Forest, using a statistical five-fold cross-validation method. The proposed method showed an improved average performance of 0.6% and 2.7% in both accuracy and AUC criteria when compared with the SVM model with the highest classification performance of the three models respectively.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.347-365
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• 1995

A survey was conducted to study perception and attitudes of health workers towards health center's activities and organization of health services, from August 15 to September 30, 1994. The study population was 310 health workers engaged in seven urban health centers in Taegu City area. A questionnaire method was used to collect data and response rate was 81.3 percent or 252 respondents. The following are summaries of findings: Profiles of study population: Health workers were predominantly female(62.3%); had college education(60.3%); and held medical and nursing positions(39.6%), technicians(30.6%) and public health/administrative positions(29.8%). Perceptions on health center's resources: Slightly more than a half(51.1%) of respondents expressed that physical facilities of the centers are inadequate; equipments needed are short(39.0%); human resource is inadequate(44.8%); and health budget allocated is insufficient(38.5%) to support the performance of health center's activities. Decentralization and health services: The majority revealed that the decentralization of government system would affect the future activities of health centers(51.9%) which may have to change. However, only one quarter of respondents(25.4%) seemed to view the decentralization positively as they expect that it would help perform health activities more effectively. The majority of the respondents(78.6%) insisted that the function and organization of the urban health centers should be changed. Target workload and job satisfaction: A large proportion (43.3%) of respondents felt that present target setting systems for various health activities are unrealistic in terms of community needs and health center's situation while only 11.1 percent responded it positively; the majority(57.5%) revealed that they need further training in professional fields to perform their job more effectively; more than one third(35.7%) expressed that they enjoy their professional autonomy in their job performance; and a considerable proportion (39.3%) said they are satisfied with their present work. Regarding the personnel management, more worker(47.3%) perceived it negatively than positive(11.5%) as most of workers seemed to think the personnel management practiced at the health centers is not fair or justly done. Health services rendered: Among health services rendered, health workers perceived the following services are most successfully delivered; they are, in order of importance, Tb control, curative services, and maternal and child health care. Such areas as health education, oral health, environmental sanitation, and integrated health services are needed to be strengthening. Regarding the community attitudes towards health workers, 41.3 percent of respondents think they are trusted by the community they serve. New areas of concern identified which must be included in future activities of health centers are, in order of priority, health care of elderly population, home health care, rehabilitation services, and such chronic diseases control programs as diabetes, hypertension, school health and mental health care. In conclusion, the study revealed that health workers seemed to have more negative perceptions and attitudes than positive ones towards organization and management of health services and activities performed by the urban health centers where they are engaged. More specifically, the majority of health workers studied revealed to have the following areas of health center's organization and management inadequate or insufficient to support effective performance of their health activities: Namely, physical facilities and equipments required are inadequate; human and financial resources are insufficient; personnel management is unsatisfactory; setting of service target system is unrealistic in terms of the community needs. However, respondents displayed a number of positive perceptions, particularly to those areas as further training needs and implementation of decentralization of government system which will bring more autonomy of local government as they perceived these change would bring the necessary changes to future activities of the health center. They also displayed positive perceptions in their job autonomy and have job satisfactions.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.14-25
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• 2001

Purpose : To determine whether there exist gender differences in pain in Korean cancer patients and whether the depression and performance that are often expressed differently between men and women with cancer interact with pain. Method : The results of survey were collected from 140 in- and out-patients (78 male and 62 female) who had cancer treatment at one of the university hospital in Seoul for four months from February of 1999. The severity and interference of pain were examined with the self-reported survey based on Korean version of Brief Pain Inventory (BPI-K). Demographic and clinical information for all patient were compiled by reviewing their medical records, and the level of depression was examined with the Korean version of Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-K). Usual statistical methods, e.g., frequences, means and SDs were used to characterize the sample. The chi-square tests for categorical data and t-test for numerical data were used for group comparison. And the correlation between variables were performed using Pearson correlation coefficient. Resuts : 1) The mean scores of the worst pain for last 24-hours measured with the pain severity of BPI-K were 5.77 in male and 6.45 in female. The pain interference of BPI-K in men was in the order of mood (5.49), enjoy (5.36), and work (5.00), and in women were work (7.48), enjoy (7.16), and mood (6.53). 2) In pain severity, significant difference was found between men and women in the average pain for last 24-hours (t=-2.130, P=.035). In pain interference, significant difference was found between men and women in activity (t=-2.450, P=.015), mood (t=-2,321, P=.022), walk (t=-2.762, P=.007), work (t=-4.946, P=.000), relate (t=-2.595, P=.010), sleep (t=-2.071, P=.040), enjoy (t=-3.198, P=.001). 3) It was found that the items of pain and depression are significantly correlated in men but not in women. Men also exhibited higher correlation in the items of pain and performance status than women. Conclusions : Women report significantly greater average pain for last 24-hours and for all items of pain interference than men. Pain and depression are significantly correlated in men. The results of this study suggest that gender differences in pain should be considered for planning effective pain management program.