• 한국노년학
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.785-808
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• 2016

This study portraits the way of self-preparation for death among the elderly and examines the meaning and values attached to the elderly-care by their family and friends through the analysis of Kyung-ran Jo's novels. First, the author describes the difficulties and inner conflict of women who provide care for the elderly, especially those facing death in the near future. She also describes how the acceptance of death and self-discovery among the caregivers can be developed from the experience of long term care. These are consistent with the arguments by Ecofemnist on positive sides of providing caregiving in an aging society. In her novels, caregiving from young women is not described as the consequences of internalized gender norms of traditional Confucian culture. Rather, it is depicted as attitude toward a life in a commune where the meaning of life and death of elderly is shared between generations. In addition, struggles of the elderly figures against diseases and the process of their death provide an opportunity for young caregivers to overcome the trauma of other's death witnessed in their childhood. They lead the young caregivers to reflect themselves by raising ontologistic questions on life and death. The author shows the communication between generations presenting the self-preparation of death from the old generation undergoing irreversible aging and caregiving activities of significant others from the young generation. In doing so, the author points out the ethical grounds for diseases and death in old age given the condition of personalization of death in the modern society.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.285-310
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• 2004

The major purpose of this study is to examine effectiveness of an intervention program which aims at education/training caregivers of the dementia and/or stroke elderly. This program was conducted at group level. Participants of this program were the primary caregivers who have taken care of the elderly with dementia and/or stroke. To test the effectiveness of the caregiver education/training program, this study employed an quasi-experimental design: to compare pretest score with posttest ones for the same participants. Total forty two primary caregivers have completed the program. Seventeen caregivers were in experimental group, whereas twenty five ones belonged to control group. Our data suggest that, for the primary caregivers, subjective quality of life was more important than cargiving burden. Subjective quality of life among the caregivers significantly improved, after completing the program. This result suggests that a short-term intervention program at group level is not effective to reduce caregiving burden because an infra structure of community resources, to which the caregivers and their family access, did not remain at sufficient level. However, participants have showed improved mutual solidarity, and they have exposed to wider spectrum of a variety of information. As a result, they have perceived that the level of subjective quality of life has positively changed. Additional factors have influenced on determining the quality of life among the caregivers. The caregivers, whose demented elderly showed lower level of ADL and IADL, or who have experienced the short period of caregiving, were more likely to belong to higher level of quality of life. The quality of life among the caregivers were even more improved in the following group: being young, and highly educated, man. One of the contributions from this study is that we have found caregiver's characteristics, which need an intervention most. In addition, our study implies that specific contents of the caregivers' education/training program should be conducted based on each family's unique characteristics.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.180-189
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to emphasize the strategy of the home visiting physical therapy for elderly patients who have joint and musculoskeletal problems, disabled person who staying in home and early discharged person who staying in home with replacement of artificial hip joint and central nerve system problems with CP, CVA, SCI etc. Home visiting physical therapist can provide evaluation and diagnosis, treatment with their special knowledge and techniques, treatment council and education for the patients and family member and refer the patients to other specialist. Home visiting physical therapy can expects that patients will have better treatment with emotionally, economically and for long term care patients.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.61-69
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• 2021

Purpose: Senior long-term care facilities are vulnerable to a cluster infection because of frequent physical contact, large group dining, communal living, and room sharing. This study aims to provide architectural improvement plans for a quarantine system in the facilities. Methods: Actual quarantine action data, guidelines from governments and institutes, in-depth interviews with facility staff are analyzed. Results: To prevent a cluster infection in the senior facilities, it is necessary to provide an architectural plan focusing on increasing the number of single rooms and isolation rooms, providing isolation rooms for staff, separation of a soiled room from a clean room, planing an entry vestibule and a visitor's room. Implications: It is important to analyze the existing condition of facilities that had been going through cohort isolation and provide the architectural solution to strengthen infection control.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.53
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• pp.105-128
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• 2003

This study examined the factors affecting family caregiver's preference for utilization of community care services among those who are caring for 65+ elderly parents, and aimed to show how social eldercare services would be settled in Korea. Help-seeking behavior model developed by Anderson and Newman(1973) was used to analyze the factors affecting their preference for utilizing the community care service among 283 family caregivers. Frequency, Chi-square, and Multinominal logistic analysis on SAS 6.12 was used. According to the results, about 90% of the family caregivers have preference for community and institute care services. In community care service, about a half comprise the preference with charge while the other without charge. However, about 90% of those for institute care service show their willingness to pay for the service. Also, a majority of caregivers like to rely on social eldercare service, rather than family as exclusively responsible, against long-term care for their elderly parents. Multinominal analysis demonstrates that use versus nonuse of community care services is primarily affected by predisposing factors(including age, carer-caree closeness, and familism) and need factors (including economic or psychological burden of eldercare, and additional role for family care). Enabling factors, such as family income level, economic support from other family members and siblings, and supportive care-helpers, are mainly associated with the preferences of free versus charge in service use. These findings provide some implications and suggestions for the development of social eldercare services in our aging society.

• Perspectives in Nursing Science
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.73-89
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• 2006

Complementary and alternative medicine has gained popularity and respectability in recent years in the United States. Since aging is often associated with chronic health conditions that commonly lead to physical and psychosocial disabilities (e.g., depression, functional and/or cognitive disabilities, and decreased quality of life), older adults often seek options to maintain health and treat chronic conditions as an adjunct to conventional medical care. Herbal products, the most commonly used among various complementary and alternative medicines (CAM), should be used with caution due to potential herbal-drug interactions (related to polypharmacy) and herbal-disease interactions (related to comorbidities). Five of the most common chronic conditions in older adults are chronic pain, cardiovascular problems, hypertension, diabetes, and chronic lung problems. A high rate of falls or risk of falling is also a problem unique to this older population. For these conditions, only a few types of CAM (e.g., acupuncture, qi gong, tai chi) were tested, with promising results. However, in spite of evidence supporting the use of certain types of CAM to alleviate some common chronic conditions, findings are limited in terms of other types of CAM tested and both short and long-term effects. More rigorous clinical trials of various CAM types are thus warranted to advance scientific knowledge and establish evidence-based practices to care for the growing number of older adults who deserve to have a better quality of life.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.19-31
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• 2019

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to analyze research trends in age-friendly research and suggest directions for future research. Methods: For this study, 112 articles related to age-friendly research were selected, from 605 published articles in The Korean Journal of Health Service Management (2007-2018). Content analysis and text network analysis were conducted using SPSS 23.0 and NetMiner 4. Results: First, 2 authors (30.4%) and 4 keywords (45.5%) were the most studied. Most of the studies used quantitative research (93.8%). Primary data (61.9%) and SPSS (77.7%) were the most used for analysis. Second, there were seven common keywords in the top 10 in all the centralities. They were Elderly, Geriatric Hospital, Depression, Care Workers, Long-Term Care Facilities, Experience, and Attitude. Conclusions: This study shows the need for diversity of research topics, subjects, research methods, and analytical tools in future age-friendly related studies. In addition, it suggests activating convergence research in this field linked to various industries and services.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.429-439
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• 2018

Purpose: The aim of this study is to identify core keyword of frailty research in the past 35 years to understand the structure of knowledge of frailty. Methods: 10,367 frailty articles published between 1981 and April 2016 were retrieved from Web of Science. Keywords from these articles were extracted using Bibexcel and social network analysis was conducted with the occurrence network using NetMiner program. Results: The top five keywords with a high frequency of occurrence include 'disability', 'nursing home', 'sarcopenia', 'exercise', and 'dementia'. Keywords were classified by subheadings of MeSH and the majority of them were included under the healthcare and physical dimensions. The degree centralities of the keywords were arranged in the order of 'long term care' (0.55), 'gait' (0.42), 'physical activity' (0.42), 'quality of life' (0.42), and 'physical performance' (0.38). The betweenness centralities of the keywords were listed in the order of depression' (0.32), 'quality of life' (0.28), 'home care' (0.28), 'geriatric assessment' (0.28), and 'fall' (0.27). The cluster analysis shows that the frailty research field is divided into seven clusters: aging, sarcopenia, inflammation, mortality, frailty index, older people, and physical activity. Conclusion: After reviewing previous research in the 35 years, it has been found that only physical frailty and frailty related to medicine have been emphasized. Further research in psychological, cognitive, social, and environmental frailty is needed to understand frailty in a multifaceted and integrative manner.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.357-363
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• 2022

South Korea faces elderly care crisis with both low fertility rate and rapid ageing rate. Long-term care insurance in 2008 has taken care burden from family to nation. However, few options, lack of tailored services, and unstable community care plan caused blankness of care in some areas. Especially, increasing dementia rate has become an emergent social issue. Welfare technology could be a useful alternative to fill out the gap between demand and supply. Using FGI method on two groups(high-risk dementia group and MCI group), intimacy, accessibility and preventive way of dementia with welfare technology are analysed in this paper. Despites of a few differences of dementia progress, interests towards technology are expressed. More suggestions using TV and normal telephone to improve daily independence are presented as well. Amongst MCI group, help-service for technology-use at ADS and linkage ways of in-home services are also suggested.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.302-314
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• 2011

Purpose: This study aimed to validate instruments to classify the frailty of Korean elderly people in community. Methods: For this study, 632 elders were selected from community-based elderly houses and home visiting registries, and data on frailty were collected using three instruments during November, 2008. The Korean Frail Scale (KFS) was composed of 10 domains with the maximum score of 20. The Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS) had 10 domains with the maximum score of 17. The 25_Japan Frail Scale (25_JFS) was composed of 6 domains with the maximum score of 25. Internal consistency was measured with Cronbach's ${\alpha}$. Sensitivity, specificity and area under the curve (AUC) of ROC were measured to see validity with long.term care insurance grade as a gold standard. Results: The Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ was .72 for KFS, .55 for EFS, and .80 for 25_JFS. Sensitivity, specificity, and AUC were 70.0%, 83.2%, and .83, respectively, at cutting point 10.5 for the KFS, 50.0%, 80.9%, and .66, respectively, at 8.5 for EFS, and 80.0%, 85.9%, and .86, respectively, at 12.5 for 25_JFS. Conclusion: KFS and three JFS showed favorable internal consistency and predictive validity. Further longitudinal studies are recommended to confirm predictive validity.