• Journal of The Korean Society of Maternal and Child Health
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.159-165
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• 2017

The thalidomide tragedy in the 1960s has resulted in a perpetuation of a certain perception amongst physicians and pregnant women that the use of medication during pregnancy is a potential teratogen. Consequently, physicians hesitate in prescribing medication to pregnant women. In addition, pregnant women often refuse medication despite therapeutic necessity because of this existing perception. Recently there have been frequent adverse pregnancy outcomes related to the recurrence of chronic diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, following pregnancy in older women. And there are lots of unnecessary termination of pregnancy due to the of information of medication exposed to medication following over 50% of unintended pregnancy. In light of this, better dissemination of information regarding the safe usage of medication for pregnant women is required. This would not only be cost-effective in terms of medical expenditure, but also prove beneficial for the treatment of diseases. In addition, Korea needs to adapt to the increasing changes of the international information system regarding supporting the safe usage of medication during pregnancy. An example of this is shown by the recent changes to the labeling of medication by the United States Food and Drug Administration. The new labeling includes information on the risk of usage, rather than just an arbitrary alphabetic classification of B, C, D, or X. Furthermore, this information is limited in Korea because of the lack of research, which in turn is due to several limitations on ethics and methodology, as well as present regulations on the research of pregnant women. From this, we can learn that government support is critical for the establishment of research so that we can alter the perception that all medication is harmful to pregnant women.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.24-32
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• 2016

Objective: The visually impaired have limited access to health care services and related information, and thus, they can have serious hurdles against properly taking medications. Despite that it is important to improve self-care ability of the visually impaired for correct medication use, there have been few studies investigating their needs for health care services in Korea, particularly focusing on proper medication usage. This study is to explore safety-related issues regarding mediation usage among the visually impaired based on in-depth interview. We particularly focus on any obstacles for safe use of medicines including experience on medication-related adverse effects in order to provide preliminary evidence for policy measures to improve proper medication use among the visually impaired. Methods: Study sample was visually impaired individuals who resided in Seoul area and were registered in the National Association of Visually Impaired. The association helped the process of recruiting the study participants. In-depth interview for each study participants was conducted. Each interview was recorded and later converted into a written script to extract core contents for the analysis. Results: The study participants comprised of three women (42.9%) and four men (57.1%). One was in his 20's, and there were four participants in 30's and two in 40's. Fully impaired participants were majority (5 out of 7). Limitation to physical access to health care providers and health information were the key factors to hamper safe medication utilization among the study participants. Difficulty reading medication information and may take the wrong medication or incorrect doses of medication, resulting in serious consequences, including overdose or inadequate treatment of health problems. Visually impaired patients report increased anxiety related to medication management and must rely on others to obtain necessary drug information. Pharmacists have a unique opportunity to pursue accurate medication adherence in this special population. This article reviews literature illustrating how severe medication mismanagement can occur in the visually impaired elderly and presents resources and solutions for pharmacists to take a larger role in adherence management in this population. Conclusion: The visually impaired had difficulties reading medication information and identifying medicines, and took incorrect doses of medications. Public support for safe medication use and medication management among the visually impaired is necessary.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.92-95
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• 2006

Medication counseling improves patients' compliance, which enhances the effectiveness of treatment and reduces the medical cost consequently. Since separation of dispensary from medical practice took place, most patients have had to go to pharmacy after receiving prescription from hospital. The importance of medication counseling in pharmacy thus has been emphasized. To study the present conditions of medication counseling from the pharmacists and the patients satisfaction with them, we conducted a survey with questionnaires. The subjects were 146 outpatients and 55 pharmacies located in Yeongdeungpo-gu. The research showed that 69.9% of the outpatients had received medication counseling and only 35.5% of them were satisfied with it. The main reason for their unsatisfaction was insufficiency of explanation. A number of patients(75.3%) were thinking that medication counseling from the pharmacists is necessary for appropriate administration and optimal efficacy of the medicine. Among 55 pharmacies involved in the research, 17 of them(30.9%) answered that they have been giving patients medication counseling, which were mostly verbally done. Only 8 of them(l4.5%) were providing medication information sheets for some specific drugs. The pharmacists referred to a few problems disturbing optimal medication counseling like these: 1) Lack of time, 2) insufficient information, 3) inappropriate counseling skills. To improve these problems, they hope to get more information about prescription and specific medicines from pharmacy in hospital. If hospital decides to hold the lectures on medication counseling, about 80% of the pharmacists tend to take part in them.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.919-931
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• 2018

In this study, we developed textile proximity sensor using conductive textile to develop a Medication adherence management system. The textile proximity sensor utilizes the principle of the capacitor, and the ring type sensor used to reduce the fringe-effect. When take medicines, we made a custom PCB that converts the change of the data measured by the sensor into a digital value so that transmitted the PC. In order to compare the performance of the system, we evaluated the correlation between the data variation according to the quantity of pills in the electronic compact scale and the data in this system. As a result, Pearson's correlation coefficient was 0.956(p<0.01), confirmed a good correlation between the scale and our system. Therefore, we concluded that our system evaluated able to whether or not to take medication.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.795-804
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• 2011

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of interactive pictorial education on community dwelling older Korean adults' self-efficacy and knowledge for safe medication. Methods: A quasi-experimental, three-group pre- and post-intervention design was used in this study. The interactive pictorial education was designed to suit the learning patterns and psychomotor skills of older adults. The education content, dealing with safe medication, was delivered over three sessions. A total of 136 older adults from local senior centers were assigned to one of the three groups: a) interactive pictorial education plus information booklet (experimental); b) education only with information booklet (conventional); or c) no intervention (control). Results: Participants receiving interactive pictorial education had significantly higher self-efficacy (F=24.32, p<.001) and knowledge (F=24.26, p<.001) scores than the information booklet or control group at post intervention. Post-hoc analyses indicated that both the interactive pictorial and the information booklet groups had significantly higher self-efficacy and knowledge scores than the control group at the post-test point (p<.05). Furthermore, the interactive pictorial group had higher self-efficacy and knowledge scores than the information booklet group at the post-test point (p<.05). Conclusion: These results suggest that the interactive pictorial education is an innovative approach that provides a means for older adults to learn appropriate medication use to improve their own health. It empowers older adults with different literacy levels to enhance their self-efficacy and knowledge for the safe use of medication.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.398-406
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• 2019

This study was conducted to examine the medication non-adherence and related factors based on medication adherence model of older adults that use polypharmacy. A survey was used to collect data from 190 study participants. Among the 190 subjects, 43.2% did not adhere to their polypharmacy intentionally. The reason for medication non-adherence was listed in order of 'when they felt well on symptoms', 'when it was annoying and uncomfortable', and 'when they felt worse due to medication'. Moreover, the older adults often do not seek for medication information actively. Between adherence and non-adherence groups, while there were differences in gender, type of medication, and experience in drug-related side effects, there were no statistically significant differences in medication information contents and route. This study demonstrates that gender, type of medication, and experience in drug-related side effects should be considered to promote medication adherence. In addition, since the elderly with polypharmacy are rarely actively searching for the contents and route of drug information, the contents of drug information need to be provided by the route preferred by the elderly in order to assist in their decision-making process for polypharmacy.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.149-189
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• 1996

The aims of this study were to find out present situation of self-medication, and to explicate the factors affecting self-medication propensity. To explicate empirically the factors affecting self-medication propensity, a model containing five groups of determining factors such as attitudinal, behavioral, knowled해, and need of health care factors, and demographic factors were developed. Data were collected from 647 residents in Pusan and Kyungnam using the self-administered questionnaire. The major reslts obtained were as follows: First, self-medication was 32% of all utilization of pharmacy. The drugs used for self-medication most commonly were analgesics(16.2%), followed by antacids and stomachics(14.2%), dermatologic preparations(13.1%), tonics and drinks (12.6%). Second, the sources from which people obtained drug information at self-medication were label of the container(50.8%), pharmacist(32.4%), self-decision or lay person(16.8%). The experience of side effect was 10.6% of all self-medication and how people cope with was withdrawal(59.0%), consultation by pharmacist or doctor(35.9%). Third, the results of ANOVA showed a statistically significant relationship between self-medication propensity and 3 demograpic factors, such as sex(p<0.10), age(p<0.10) and job(p<0.05). Forth, the results of multiple regression analysis showed a statistically significant positive relationship betwee self-medication propensity and satisfaction of previous self-medication, knowledge of drug, drug dependency, the frequency of doctor visiting, confidence in drug advertisement, tendency toward self-treatment of the family, and job. And it showed negative relationship between self-medication propensity and confidence in the medical profession, and health behavior. The model explained 29.5% of the variance in self-medication(p<0.001).

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.25-31
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• 2013

Medication adherence is a basic and important element in diabetes management, and it has been known the adherence rate should be keep over 80% to get positive result in diabetes management. In order to increase medication adherence, there have been smart phone apps that record medication, exercise, and diet. However, diabetes patients are generally over 50s, and most of them do not use smart phones. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a medication adherence help system that support both smart phone apps and feature phone SMS. Furthermore, we introduce system architecture for the system. Our work will help ICT-based diabetic management system developers to consider some issues for mobile based diabetic management systems..

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.117-128
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• 2011

In this paper, we present a novel approach for contents-based medication image retrieval from a medication image database using the shape classification and color information of the medication. One major problem in developing a contents-based drug image retrieval system is there are too many similar images in shape and color and it makes difficult to identify any specific medication by a single feature of the drug image. To resolve such difficulty in identifying images, we propose a hybrid approach to retrieve a medication image based on shape and color features of the medication. In the first phase of the proposed method we classify the medications by shape of the images. In the second phase, we identify them by color matching between a query image and preclassified images in the first phase. For the shape classification, the shape signature, which is unique shape descriptor of the medication, is extracted from the boundary of the medication. Once images are classified by the shape signature, Hue and Saturation(HS) color model is used to retrieve a most similarly matched medication image from the classified database images with the query image. The proposed system is designed and developed especially for specific population- seniors to browse medication images by using visual information of the medication in a feasible fashion. The experiment shows the proposed automatic image retrieval system is reliable and convenient to identify the medication images.

• Health Communication
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.185-193
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• 2018

Background: Nursing college students are exposed to information about diseases or drugs, and are likely to have a distorted perception of drug knowledge or behavior. The study aimed to identify knowledge and attitude about drugs and current status of self-medication among nursing students. Methods: The subjects were 172 nursing students from a university in Busan. Data were collected with structured questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive analysis, t-test, and one-way ANOVA using SPSS 23.0. Results: Nursing students had a high level of knowledge about drugs, but attitudes toward drugs were relatively low. 83.7% of patients had experience of self-medication. The methods to acquire information for self-administration were 29.9% by smart phone and 27.1% by internet. The use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) among self-medication drugs was the highest. The most common reason for self-medication was 'I thought it to be a mild disease', and the pharmacists were the most affected by choice of self-medication. The knowledge about drugs was statistically significant according to grade, school life satisfaction and subjective health status. The attitudes about medication were statistically significant according to grade and self-medication experience. Conclusion: Nursing college students need drug safety education to improve awareness and practice of correct drug use.