• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.15-27
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• 2015

As patient satisfaction is a crucial component of improved health care outcomes, there is a need to evaluate the relationship between physicians' attitude and patients' satisfaction. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between patients' satisfaction and physicians' friendly and caring attitudes by using recent physician ratings by patients. Data from a cross-sectional survey using a convenience sampling was utilized to examine the relationship between physicians' attitudes and patients' satisfaction. The independent variable was the physician's attitude, and the dependent variables were patients' satisfaction with the physician and the office setting. A total of 273,994 patients it the US were included. The patients' average (standard deviation, SD) satisfaction with the physician was 78.08 (0.14), and the average (SD) satisfaction with the office setting was 78.62 (0.12) out of 100. Physicians' attitude was a significant predicting factor impacting the patients' satisfaction with the physician and the office setting (p < 0.001). To facilitate patients' satisfaction with healthcare, a continuous effort to develop physicians' ability to communicate in an empathetic manner should be undertaken so that patients perceive their physicians as empathetic.

• Perspectives in Nursing Science
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.88-95
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• 2016

Purpose: Gestational weight gain and prepregnancy body weight are important factors of childbirth outcomes, which further cause obesity, metabolic diseases, or psychological problems later in women's lives. Changes in diet, westernized lifestyle, traditional postpartum care, and childbirth at older age are thought to be threats to proper weight management in Korean women of reproductive age. Public health and antenatal care need to focus on the proper body weight management of women by carefully planning pregnancy to postpartum periods. Purpose: This study explored the body weight changes from pregnancy to postpartum and the related characteristics in women within 12 months after childbirth. Methods: A cross-sectional, retrospective study was conducted with 102 Korean women within 12 months after childbirth. Data were collected using an online survey system, and a structured questionnaire available for electronic self-administration was modified to include demographics, obstetrical history, and body weight at 6 time points. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire and Eating Habit Measurement instruments were also used in data collection. A professional survey agency recruited the participants, and data were automatically saved and then analyzed. Results: The average age of the participants was 33.8 years, 48% were housewives and were well-educated. Seventy-two percent of the participants were primiparas and 82% had breastfed their babies. The body mass index (BMI) ranged from 17.3 to 27.8, indicating that 21.5% of the participants were overweight or obese. The mean gestational weight gain was 11.8 kg, and weight loss was apparent during the first 3 months postpartum. The mean decline in weight was 3.4 kg at one year after childbirth. Women wanted to lose 5.6 kg (range: 3~20 kg), however 44% of them reported that they had not engaged in any weight control efforts. Further, 72% of them reported having engaged in a low level of physical activity. Body weight was not associated with women's characteristics, physical activity score, and diet. Conclusion: Women's awareness of gestational weight gain, lifestyle modification, and the risk of prolonged weight retention should be promoted through the antenatal and women's healthcare systems. As pregnancy and childbirth are critical events that affect women's health, integrative education to ensure healthy transition to life after delivery is required.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.249-254
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• 2019

According to the recent expansion of the network environment, the spread of smart devices is continuously increasing. With the spread of smart devices such as smart phones, smart pads and wearables, changes are taking place in smart technologies and IT convergence technologies. The development of smart technology is a key element of the 4th industrial technology. The Fourth Industrial Revolution expanded the new service-based industry by adding intelligence to residential, industrial and production environments using IT convergence and smart devices. Research on providing various services using smart technologies, such as smart home, smart factory, smart farm, and smart healthcare, is being conducted in variety. In particular, There is a sharp rise in smart homes due to the proliferation of IoT devices and the growth of sensor technology, control technology, applications, data management, and cloud services. Smart home services using smart technology provide residents with convenient, beneficial services and environments. Smart home service has complemented the existing home network service, but there still are flaws to be modified. In other words, the spread of smart devices, the development of service provider-oriented services, and the interlocking of services have limitations in providing services in consideration of user environment and user state. In order to solve this problem, this study proposes a smart home service system that considers the situation of the elderly.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.79-112
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to examine the differences of profitability based on the analysis of business and medical service performances of four hospitals in Incheon area with similar size. and to compare hospitals with the best and the worst performances and analyze the factors behind the differences. The differences could be caused by differences in medical service statistics, number of staff, and financial results, etc. The data was acquired through the homepage of the National Tax Service(financial statements for the fiscal year 2009) and the Medical Record Association of Incheon(medical service statistics for the years 2008 and 2009) along with questionnaire survey to the hospitals(personnel data for the year 2009). The results of the study are as follows. Medical profits to medical revenues ratio for the hospitals(referred as Hospital A, B, C, and D) shows, in order, C(8.2%), A(8.0%), B(7.8%), and D(7.4%). However, net income to medical revenues ratio shows otherwise: C(8.5%), D(5.8%), A(3.0%), and B(0.6%). Hospital B shows a high medical profit to revenue ratio but the lowest net income to revenue ratio due to large interest expenses. The leverage ratio of Hospital B is the highest (419.6%), resulting in a very low interest coverage ratio(1.1). On the other hand, Hospital C shows favorable results in both profit ratios, with 8.2% and 8.5% each. Hospital C has the lowest leverage ratio(53.0%) and the highest interest coverage ratio(34.9). Therefore, the results show Hospital C has the best performance while Hospital B the worst. The two hospitals(B and C) show similar results in certain areas and big differences in other areas. The area that has the biggest influence on financial results turns out leverage ratio. Hospital B shows 'very good' to 'good' results in terms of medical service statistics in general. However, the leverage ratio is too high and the liquidity ratio too low, resulting in a very low profit ratio. The results of this study have some limitations in terms of generalization as only four hospitals in Incheon area were selected for the study, resulting in a deficiency in the representativeness of the sample. Further studies with bigger sample size and deeper analysis are expected in this area.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.329-337
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• 2019

This study is a descriptive research designed to determine the effects of nurses' image and major satisfaction on nursing students' career identity. For this purpose, the study made a questionnaire survey of 117 nursing students attending at K college located B city. Data collected from the survey were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 program. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows. First, participants showed significant differences in nursing students' career identity on grade and motivation of entrance. Second, there were correlations between nurses' image and nursing students' career identity and also between their major satisfaction and career identity. Third, nursing students' career identity was influenced by their relationship satisfaction between professors and students, which are sub-factors of major satisfaction, but nurses' image did not influenced their career identity. Therefore it is needed to provide nursing students with educational and interventive programs that help their better their relationship satisfaction between professors and students, continuous attention and guidance are necessary to facilitate communication and career guidance between professors and students.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.84 no.4
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• pp.317-325
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• 2021

Background: Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) are significant public health issues in the world, but the epidemiological data pertaining to HAP/VAP is limited in Korea. The objective of this study was to investigate the characteristics, management, and clinical outcomes of HAP/VAP in Korea. Methods: This study is a multicenter retrospective cohort study. In total, 206,372 adult patients, who were hospitalized at one of the 13 participating tertiary hospitals in Korea, were screened for eligibility during the six-month study period. Among them, we included patients who were diagnosed with HAP/VAP based on the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)/American Thoracic Society (ATS) definition for HAP/VAP. Results: Using the IDSA/ATS diagnostic criteria, 526 patients were identified as HAP/VAP patients. Among them, 27.9% were diagnosed at the intensive care unit (ICU). The cohort of patients had a median age of 71.0 (range from 62.0 to 79.0) years. Most of the patients had a high risk of aspiration (63.3%). The pathogen involved was identified in 211 patients (40.1%). Furthermore, multidrug resistant (MDR) pathogens were isolated in 138 patients; the most common MDR pathogen was Acinetobacter baumannii. During hospitalization, 107 patients with HAP (28.2%) had to be admitted to the ICU for additional care. The hospital mortality rate was 28.1% in the cohort of this study. Among the 378 patients who survived, 54.2% were discharged and sent back home, while 45.8% were transferred to other hospitals or facilities. Conclusion: This study found that the prevalence of HAP/VAP in adult hospitalized patients in Korea was 2.54/1,000 patients. In tertiary hospitals in Korea, patients with HAP/VAP were elderly and had a risk of aspiration, so they were often referred to step-down centers.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.217-230
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• 2019

This study was conducted to develop a customized severity-adjustment method and to evaluate their validity for acute myocardial infarction(AMI) patients to complement the limitations of the existing severity-adjustment method for comorbidities. For this purpose, the subjects of KCD-7 code I20.0 ~ I20.9, which is the main diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction were extracted using the Korean National Hospital Discharge In-depth Injury survey data from 2006 to 2015. Three tools were used for severity-adjustment method of comorbidities : CCI (charlson comorbidity index), ECI (Elixhauser comorbidity index) and the newly proposed CCS (Clinical Classification Software). The results showed that CCS was the best tool for the severity correction, and that support vector machine model was the most predictable. Therefore, we propose the use of the customized method of severity correction and machine learning techniques from this study for the future research on severity adjustment such as assessment of results of medical service.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.99-104
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• 2021

In this paper, we propose health risk management using feature extraction and cluster analysis considering time flow. The proposed method proceeds in three steps. The first is the pre-processing and feature extraction step. It collects user's lifelog using a wearable device, removes incomplete data, errors, noise, and contradictory data, and processes missing values. Then, for feature extraction, important variables are selected through principal component analysis, and data similar to the relationship between the data are classified through correlation coefficient and covariance. In order to analyze the features extracted from the lifelog, dynamic clustering is performed through the K-means algorithm in consideration of the passage of time. The new data is clustered through the similarity distance measurement method based on the increment of the sum of squared errors. Next is to extract information about the cluster by considering the passage of time. Therefore, using the health decision-making system through feature clusters, risks able to managed through factors such as physical characteristics, lifestyle habits, disease status, health care event occurrence risk, and predictability. The performance evaluation compares the proposed method using Precision, Recall, and F-measure with the fuzzy and kernel-based clustering. As a result of the evaluation, the proposed method is excellently evaluated. Therefore, through the proposed method, it is possible to accurately predict and appropriately manage the user's potential health risk by using the similarity with the patient.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.175-185
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• 2023

Recently, novel viral infections such as COVID-19 have spread and pose a serious public health problem. In particular, these diseases have a fatal effect on the elderly, threatening life and causing serious social and economic losses. Accordingly, applications such as telemedicine, healthcare, and disease prevention using the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) have been introduced in many industries to improve disease detection, monitoring, and quarantine performance. However, since existing technologies are not applied quickly and comprehensively to the sudden emergence of infectious diseases, they have not been able to prevent large-scale infection and the nationwide spread of infectious diseases in society. Therefore, in this paper, we try to predict the spread of infection by collecting various infection information with regional limitations through a virus disease information collector and performing AI analysis and severity matching through an AI broker. Finally, through the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, danger alerts are issued to the elderly, messages are sent to block the spread, and information on evacuation from infected areas is quickly provided. A realistic elderly support system compares the location information of the elderly with the information of the infected area and provides an intuitive danger area (infected area) avoidance function with an augmented reality-based smartphone application. When the elderly visit an infected area is confirmed, quarantine management services are provided automatically. In the future, the proposed system can be used as a method of preventing a crushing accident due to sudden crowd concentration in advance by identifying the location-based user density.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.7-19
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• 2017

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of model attractiveness on brand attitude and purchase intention, and examine whether product-model match-up plays a moderating role in the relationship between model attractiveness and brand attitude and purchase intention. The model attractiveness is consist of psychological and physical attractiveness of the model. The authors investigate how product-model match-up influence the strength of the relationship between model attractiveness - brand attitude and purchase intention. The purpose of this is to test whether product-model match-up influence the form and effectiveness of a model attractiveness on brand attitude and purchase intention and suggest the effective and efficient methods in the model selection strategies to increase advertising effectiveness based on the results of this study. Research design, data, and methodology - The experimental design for this study was the between subject design based on 2 group of the psychological attractiveness(high vs. low) × product-model match-up(high vs low) and 2 group of the physical attractiveness(high vs. low) × product-model match-up(high vs low). And a preliminary investigation was conducted to develop experimental stimuli through manipulation check to enhance the external validity of experimental research. The attractiveness of the model and product-model match-up are independent variables and manipulative variables in presentation of experimental stimuli. The self-administered methode experiment was conducted on 300 subjects in four groups constructed according to the independent variables. Result - The findings provide partial support for a moderator for product-model match-up on the model attractiveness - brand attitude and purchase intention. First, the influence of psychological attractiveness and physical attractiveness on brand attitude and purchase intention was shown significant. Also, it was found that the average value of brand attitude and purchase intention according to psychological attractiveness was significantly higher than the average value of brand attitude and purchase intention according to physical attractiveness in additional analysis. Second, the average value of brand attitude and purchase intention were higher when product - model match-up was high in both high and low psychological attractiveness and physical attractiveness of the model. However, in the case of psychological attractiveness, the correlation effect with product - model match-up was significant, but in the case of physical attractiveness, it was not significant. Conclusions - The results of this study suggest that the attractiveness factor should be considered in selecting the ad model by verifying the effect of the attractiveness of the model on the advertising effect. In particular, this study has great significance both academically and practically in terms of suggesting such implications that the advertising effect of psychological attractiveness and physical attractiveness may be different depending on the product type by additional analysis.