• Proceedings of the Safety Management and Science Conference
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• 2013.04a
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• pp.19-29
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• 2013

Slips and falls are associated with many occupational injuries in Korea. It is also estimated that slipping are major contributors to slip, trip and fall injury burden. So "LOCAL RULE ON OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH STANDAR D" must be improved, especially article 3(prevention of slip, trip and fall). The primary purpose of the present study is to determine if, and to what extent, the standard could be improved in present environment. In order to fulfill our objective, the another regulation in Korea and foreign countries were investigated and reviewed. Many kind of standard, mandatory documents and guideline were also reviewed. And then, regulations, standard, guideline etc. reviewed were compared with each others. The article 3 was revised as below. 1. The floors of the traffic route in workplace shall have no hole or slope, or be uneven or slippery so as, in each case, to expose employees to slip, trip and fall risk, except if adequate measures have been taken to prevent a employees falling. 2. The employer shall design, install and fix the drain for effective drainage if fluid contaminants were frequently occurred. So far as is reasonably practicable, An employer shall keep the workplace clean, sanitary, and dry so that employees won't have any risk to tripping or slipping at the workplace. 3. To facilitate cleaning, every floor, workplace, and passageway shall be, so far as is reasonably practicable, kept free from protruding objects, splinters, holes, etc. Also, some criteria was developed in this study. Standard and criteria developed in this study will help to prevent slip, trip, and fall injuries.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.123-131
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• 2021

Background: Only 2% of falls in older adults result in serious injuries (i.e., hip fracture). Therefore, it is important to differentiate injurious versus non-injurious falls, which is critical to develop effective interventions for injury prevention. Objects: The purpose of this study was to a. extract the best features of surface electromyography (sEMG) for classification of injurious falls, and b. find a best model provided by data mining techniques using the extracted features. Methods: Twenty young adults self-initiated falls and landed sideways. Falling trials were consisted of three initial fall directions (forward, sideways, or backward) and three knee positions at the time of hip impact (the impacting-side knee contacted the other knee ("knee together") or the mat ("knee on mat"), or neither the other knee nor the mat was contacted by the impacting-side knee ("free knee"). Falls involved "backward initial fall direction" or "free knee" were defined as "injurious falls" as suggested from previous studies. Nine features were extracted from sEMG signals of four hip muscles during a fall, including integral of absolute value (IAV), Wilson amplitude (WAMP), zero crossing (ZC), number of turns (NT), mean of amplitude (MA), root mean square (RMS), average amplitude change (AAC), difference absolute standard deviation value (DASDV). The decision tree and support vector machine (SVM) were used to classify the injurious falls. Results: For the initial fall direction, accuracy of the best model (SVM with a DASDV) was 48%. For the knee position, accuracy of the best model (SVM with an AAC) was 49%. Furthermore, there was no model that has sensitivity and specificity of 80% or greater. Conclusion: Our results suggest that the classification model built upon the sEMG features of the four hip muscles are not effective to classify injurious falls. Future studies should consider other data mining techniques with different muscles.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2018

This study is a descriptive research study for examining the general characteristics and health-related characteristics of the elderly in a local community, investigating factors for the fear of fall and identifying the relationship between the fear of fall, attitude to fall and fall efficacy. The subject of this study was 140 senior citizens who are using a community center in D city. The collected data was analyzed with the SPSS/WIN 21.0 program. The result of the study showed there was a significant difference in the fear of fall according to gender, person living together, subjective health condition, pain and unsafe gait. There was a significant negative correlation between the fear of fall and fall fear and fall efficacy. However, fall fear and fall efficacy were positive correlated. This study aims to provide necessary preliminary data for developing fall prevention program that can improve the fear of fall, attitude to fall and fall efficay based on the results of this study.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.213-220
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• 2024

Fall detection and prevention technologies play a pivotal role in ensuring the well-being of individuals, particularly those living independently, where falls can result in severe consequences. This paper addresses the challenge of accurate and quick fall detection by proposing a Bayesian probability-based measure applied to surface electromyography (sEMG) signals. The proposed algorithm based on a Bayesian filter that divides the sEMG signal into transient and steady states. The ratio of posterior probabilities, considering the inclusion or exclusion of the transient state, serves as a scale to gauge the dominance of the transient state in the current signal. Experimental results demonstrate that this approach enhances the accuracy and expedites the detection time compared to existing methods. The study suggests broader applications beyond fall detection, anticipating future research in diverse human-robot interface benefiting from the proposed methodology.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.86-94
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• 2020

Portable ladders are normally used both as an access tool for ascending and descending and as a platform for high place work. Though convenient, such usages make the portable ladders vulnerable to fall accidents. For this reason, many safety systems such as regulations and certifications are implemented to prevent fall accidents of portable ladders. However, nevertheless of those safety systems in Korea, annual death tolls of ladder fall accidents has remained high, and which suggests modification and improvement of the portable ladder related safety systems in Korea. The aim of this study is to propose directions for improving safety systems to effectively prevent fall accidents of portable ladders. To this end, comparative analysis on safety systems implemented in Korea and other countries including Japan, USA and UK are conducted to investigate the problems of Korean safety systems. Based on the analysis, limitations of Korean safety systems to prevent ladder fall accidents are discussed and tasks to overcome the limitations are proposed. Once implemented, the proposed tasks would contribute to prevent ladder fall accidents effectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.96-101
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• 2022

The Occupational Safety and Health Act holds that industrial safety helmets can be used as protective equipment to prevent the risk of injury in fall accidents. To better understand the importance given to PPE for the head, we analyzed the relevant regulations and guidelines in developed countries and reviewed the guidelines on testing safety helmets. The PPE regulations in Korea were notably different from those in other countries. First, except in Korea and Japan, safety helmets were used for protection against falling objects, flying objects, impact, or electric shock. However, the regulations did not recognize safety helmets as a PPE against fall hazards. Second, the impact energy applied on the helmet was within the range 50-100 J, and the helmet could protect only the upper part of the head against hazards such as the impact of falling objects, flying objects, etc. Third, in Korean regulations, the term "fall" was used in relation to the parts where the safety helmet was specified as a fall hazard PPE, unlike in other countries. We propose that the term "fall" should be revised to "shock" in Korean regulations for the safety helmet.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.11
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• pp.1330-1338
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• 2011

Social activities of the elderly have been increasing as our society progresses toward an aging society. As their activities increase, so does the occurrence of falls that could lead to fractures. Falls are serious health hazards to the elderly. Therefore, development of a device that can detect fall accidents and prevent fracture is essential. In this study, we developed a portable fall detection system for the fracture prevention system of the elderly. The device is intended to detect a fall and activate a second device such as an air bag deployment system that can prevent fracture. The fall detection device contains a 3-axis acceleration sensor and two 2-axis tilt sensors. We measured acceleration and tilt angle of body during fall and activities of daily(ADL) living using the fall detection device that is attached on the subjects'. Moving mattress which is actuated by a pneumatic system was used in fall experiments and it could provide forced falls. Sensor data during fall and ADL were sent to computer and filtered with low-pass filter. The developed fall detection device was successful in detecting a fall about 0.1 second before a severe impact to occur and detecting the direction of the fall to provide enough time and information for the fracture preventive device to be activated. The fall detection device was also able to differentiate fall from ADL such as walking, sitting down, standing up, lying down, and running.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.107-120
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• 2009

Background : To estimate fall incidence rate and associated factors in inpatients from a general hospital. Method : The data were collected from 104 fall incident reports developed by the patient safety committee in a general hospital in Seoul from 01 January 2007 to 31 December 2008. Information included general characteristics of patients, factors related to fall, types, places, circumstances and outcomes of fall. Result : The incidence rate of fall, which was 4.4 per 1,000 total discharged patients and 0.5 per 1,000 patient-days, was much lower than that of several hospitals in the United States. The difference may reflect the different incidence reporting system of each hospital. Fall-prone patients were, in general, $$\geq_-$$65 years of age, had an alert mental status, were ambulatory with some assistance, and were dependent on and ambulatory device. High incidence of falls was associated with patients with circulatory disease. The majority of fall events usually occurred in bed or at the bedside in the patient's room, and occurred more often during the night than during the day or evening. Risk factors of fall were use of drugs (antihypertensive or neuropsychiatric drugs) and environmental factors (e.g., overly high bed height, surrounding objects, inadequate fitness shoes and slippery floor). Physical injury occurred in 43.3% of fall events, which typically required diagnosis of injury and treatment such as suturing. Risk factors for repeated falls were use of a neuropsychiatric drug (odds ratio=13.9) and gait disturbance (odds ratio=91.2). Risk factors for fall-related injury were alert mental status (odds ratio=3.3 times more likely to fall than those who were drowsy or in a stupor) and general weakness(odds ratio=3.3 times more likely to fall than those who were not generally weak). Conclusion : Medical and nursing staff should be aware of the fall risk factors of hospitalized patients and should intensively pursue preventative strategies. Development of fall prevention education based on these results is recommended.

• The Journal of Korean society of community based occupational therapy
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.31-42
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• 2015

Objective : The aim of this study is to prove the effects of mental practice in balance ability of elderly population, and to investigate the possibility of application as an effective intervention method for fall prevention. Methods : This study provided mental practice to 3 subjects over 65 years old who have experienced fall, but do not have cognitive dysfunctions and independent in gait without any use of assistive devices from July to October, 2013. Within the individual case study, 4 sessions of initial baseline process (A), 5 sessions of mental practice (B), 4 sessions of re-initial baseline process (A') were proceeded using ABA design. Independent variable used mental practice for enhancing balance ability and fall efficacy in elderly population, and dependent variable were Berg Balance Scale (BBS) to find out the change in overall balance ability, Fall Efficacy Scale (FES) to see the change in fall efficacy, One-Leg Standing test(OLS), and Timed Up and Go Test (TUG) to determine the changes in both static and dynamic balance. Analysis of the results were provided via mean value and graph. Results : After the application of mental practice method, all of the subjects have shown increase in fall efficacy baseline values, and in addition, overall balance ability and both static and dynamic balances either increased or maintained. Conclusion : This study demonstrated that mental practice has positive effects on fall efficacy improvement and maintenance in elderly, thereby suggesting mental practice for fall prevention in elderly populations.

• PNF and Movement
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.57-65
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• 2013

Purpose : This purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of elastic band resistance exercise program in the falls prevention of elderly women. Methods : The subjects of this study, 46 people elderly women who participated in the exercise program of Jeollanamdo Y elderly welfare center were chosen as subjects and use the elastic band resistance exercise program for 12 weeks. Results : There was a significant increase on the physical function and fall efficacy of all the subjects in the experimental group and the control one after the experiment. Furthermore, the experimental group showed more meaningful improvement than the control one. Conclusion : Falls Efficacy of the experimental group before the experiment, after the changes in difference was noted. More results from the 12 weeks of using the elastic band resistance exercise program to increase the efficacy of body functions (power of lower extremity, muscle endurance, flexibility, balance, and agility), and falls efficacy of elderly women is considered as an effective fall prevention exercise program.