• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.467-475
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• 2023

Background: To mitigate the spread of Covid-19, nurses infected with the virus were required to isolate themselves from their families and community. Isolated patients were reported to have experienced mental distress, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and suicide. Though studies have reported the psychological impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, less is known about the lived experiences of nurses who survived Covid-19 infection in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to study the lived experiences of registered nurses who survived Covid-19 disease. In-depth interviews were conducted among nurses diagnosed with Covid-19 from two hospitals in Kenya between March and May, 2021. Purposive and snowball sampling were used to recruit registered nurses. Data were analyzed using Giorgi's steps of analysis. Results: The study included ten nurses between 29 and 45 years of age. Nurses' experiences encompassed three themes: diagnosis reaction, consequences, and coping. Reactions to the diagnosis included fear, anxiety, and sadness. The consequence of the diagnosis and isolation was stigma, isolation, and loneliness. Nurses coping mechanisms included acceptance, creating routines, support, and spirituality. Conclusion: Our findings aid in understanding how nurses experienced Covid-19 infection as patients and will provide evidence-based content for supporting nurses in future pandemics. Moreover, as we acknowledge the heroic contribution of frontline healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is prudent to recognize the considerable occupational risk as they balance their duty to care, and the risk of infection to themselves and their families.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.297-341
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• 2017

We searched out court rulings on medical affairs through court library search sites and specialized articles on medically relevant judgments sentenced in 2016. And we selected and analyzed the judgements of the court we considered important as follows. In relation to the medical civil judgements, (1) In the case of applying surgery for female infertility during cesarean section operation but it has not been done, we expressed the regret for the lack of judgment in the process of entering the medical contract, introducing the rights infringed and the scope of compensation, (2) We pointed out that the ruling on the medical malpractice estimation goes out of limit of negligence estimation doctrine, and that the court asked very high degree duty of the traditional Korean medicine doctors to cooperate with Western medicine doctors. (3) In the case of admitting hospital's 100% responsibility, we pointed out the court overlooked the uncertainty and good intention of the medical practice. (4) Additionally, We introduced the cases admitted the hospital's responsibility in the accident related to the psychiatric patients in closed ward. Relating to a medical criminal ruling, we analyzed the supreme court decision about whether the dentist's Botox injection on the patient's face is a medical practice within the scope of the license from the viewpoint whether it is within the possible range of the word. And, concerning decisions on healthcare administration, (1) we analyzed the case about when medical personnel operate multiple medical institutions, whether it is possible to get back medical care costs under the National Health Insurance Law, (2) We commented on the ruling regarding explanation obligation in terms of object, degree, subject of explanation as a prerequisite for permissible arbitrary uninsured benefits. Finally, we reviewed the decision of the Constitutional Court about the Article 24 of the Mental Health Law, which it had allowed for a mental patient to be hospitalized forcibly by the consent of two guardians and a diagnosis of a psychiatrist. Also we indicated the problems of the revised Mental Health Law.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.305-332
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• 2010

This study was searching for elements affecting satisfaction of customers by comparing health management service businesses such as wellbeing care, yoga, and fitness. The discovered elements were analyzed and verified to find which elements are affecting what businesses through case studies. Multidirectional analysis was implemented for each service type using program, physical environment, and provided service drawn from the previous researches with SERVQUAL criteria and measured values on customer satisfactions. According to the analysis, physical environment in forest wellbeing care, program in yoga, and provided service in fitness were the most affecting elements. Thus, each health management service business must consider the lifestyle and trend of customers, and the specialized service corresponding to its uniqueness must be provided to customers. Surely, modernized exercise equipment, personalized program, and comfortable-luxurious settings are must have in order to be competitive. In addition, the business owners have to realize that customers are moving to quality from quantity. This means exercise must be brought up to the level of social value for relationship and links rather than left at the level of simple physical and mental trainings. To achieve these, other programs to support relationship among customers and circulating system with friendly environment must be considered at the same time.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.38C no.12
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• pp.1106-1113
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• 2013

For patients who have senile mental disorder such as dementia, quantity of excercise and amount of sunlight are important clue for dose and the treatment. Therefore, monitoring health information of daily life is necessary for patients' safety and healthy life. Portable & wearable sensor device and server configuration monitoring data are needed to provide these services for patients. Watch-type device(smart watch) which patients wear and server system are developed in this paper. Smart watch developed includes GPS, accelerometer and illumination sensor, and can obtain real time health information by measuring the position of patients, quantity of exercise and amount of sunlight. Server system includes the sensor data analysis algorithm and web server that doctor and protector can monitor through sensor data acquired from smart watch. The proposed data analysis algorithm acquires quantity of exercise information and detects step count in patients' motion acquired from acceleration sensor and to verify this, the three cases with fast pace, slow pace, and walking pace show 96% of the experimental result. If developed u-Healthcare System for dementia patients is applied, more high-quality medical service can be provided to patients.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.417-423
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to find out how to apply CAM to college students by studying the perceptions and application factors of CAM, the actual condition of application, satisfaction according to sex, and usefulness. The subjects of this study are narrative research on H university students in Chungnam. The results of this study showed that 150(50.3%) respondents recognized CAM as an auxiliary means of modern medicine, 61(20.3%) mental and psychological stability (33.7%), and the satisfaction rate of CAM according to gender was higher in women than in men. The usefulness of CAM was 2.60, and the improvement and characteristics were 2.32 and 2.80, respectively. As a result of this study, it is necessary for university students who are the foundation of society to correctly recognize and promote CAM to prevent disease and maintain health. In addition, the analysis of the recognition and application factors of CAM, and the satisfaction according to gender, could provide information for program development of CAM in the future.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.106-114
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• 2019

This study aims to identify the effects of experiencing health promotion education on the present health status of elderly people. The subjects of this study were a total 10,532 elderly people (aged 65 years or older), and who were selected from the data of the '2017 Community Health Survey'. The health promotion education experience consisted of handwashing education/campaign, a non-smoking campaign and non-smoking education. The chronic disease control education experience consisted of education on hypertension, diabetes mellitus and arthritis. Psychiatric counseling consisted of consultations on stress, depression and suicide. The present health status consisted of the patients' ability to exercise, their self-care ability, their activities of daily living, their pain/discomfort and their anxiety/depression. The data was analyzed utilizing the chi-square test, the Mann-Whitney test and multivariate logistic regression analysis. The general characteristics of the subjects were 4,075 males (38.69%) and 6,457 females (61.31%). The average age was 73.71(±6.18) years old. The significant factors influencing the elderly peoples' present health status were age (OR=0.909, 95% CI=0.886-0.933), handwashing education/campaign (OR=2.463, 95% CI=1.703-3.563), a stop smoking campaign (OR=1.624, 95% CI=1.146-2.301) and consultation for mental problems (OR=0.533, 95% CI=0.359-0.791). In conclusion, to modify the personal habits that the elderly have had for a long time and to show the effects of education, long-term continuous education that focuses on the characteristics of the people will be effective.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.517-526
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to provide convenience to the senior center staff and policy makers through a research of "Life satisfaction" in the senior centers with a systematic review and meta-analysis of the considerations of the elderly, published in foreign journals for the past 10 years. We searched published studies in the Medline Complete, Pub-med central and Scopus databases from January 2007 to November 2017. The main key words used "Elderly AND(And OR aged) AND Personal Satisfaction/ or life satisfaction" and out of 595 searched articles a total of 6 studies were selected. After qualitative analysis of the contents of the study, meta - analyzes were conducted for factors with more than three quantitative values. The factors affecting life satisfaction of the elderly were physical health (pooled effect size 0.582, p = .000), mental health (pooled effect size 0.423, p = .000), economic problems (r = .51, p =. 001), social activities, and daily living. It is expected that this study which provides an understanding of life satisfaction of the elderly would contribute to provide general information for developing social consensus on the employment in the super aging society should help improve the quality of welfare facilities for senior citizens in the future.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.11-16
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• 2014

Objective : Despite the high prevalence and clinical importance of panic disorder, studies on the clinical characteristics and course of panic disorder are relatively rare. This study is a multi-center, and retrospective study to examine the clinical characteristics and course of Korean panic disorder patients who visit university hospital. Methods : The study subjects were panic disorder patients who had visited the psychiatric outpatient clinics of 8 university hospitals in South Korea from January to December in 2008. Finally, 238 panic patients were included in this study. Their medical charts were retrospectively reviewed and reassessed by experienced psychiatrists to examine their clinical characteristics, demographic data and clinical course in repose to pharmacotherapy. Results : Among the 238 patients (121 males vs. 117 females), the mean age of disease onset was $41.3{\pm}12.7$ years and female patients showed 5 years older age of disease onset, compared with male patients. The mean score of PSR scale was $4.5{\pm}1.0$ at the first visit, reflecting a 'marked' level of severity of illness and impairment in functioning. Only 110 patients (46.4%) completed the whole follow up visits, whereas 128 patients (53.6%) dropped out during the treatment. After $17.7{\pm}0.5$ months of mean follow up period, the mean score of PSR scale at the last visit was reduced into $2.1{\pm}0.9$, reflecting a 'residual' severity of illness and impairment in functioning. The cumulative recovery rate was 62.1% in the completer group, whereas that of the drop-out group was 47.7%. Conclusions : The mean age of disease onset in Korean panic disorder patients who had visited university hospital was about 10 years older than that of Western panic disorder patients in previous studies, and the Korean panic disorder patients who had visited university hospital showed a relatively higher cumulative recovery rate. These differences might result from an ethnic difference in clinical characteristics and course in response to pharmacotherapy of panic disorder.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.238-246
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• 2019

Background: In South Korea, as an aged society, an understanding of dementia and its risk factors is important from clinical and healthcare policy perspectives. Relationship between cognitive impairment and body weight or weight changes have been reported, but these were contradictory. We have evaluated the association between weight changes and cognitive decline using national level longitudinal data. Methods: Data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing from 2006 to 2012 were used. Association between weight changes and decline in cognitive function as measured by K-MMSE (the Korean version of the Mini-mental state examination) score was assessed by multivariate logistic regression. Weight changes were calculated from 1st wave and 3rd wave survey data, and classified into five groups as stable, increases, decreases of >10%, or 5%-10%. Results: About 37% of the total participants (n=4,512) were 65 years or older. These participants made up the largest proportion of the groups with weight change exceeding 10%. Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that weight changes exceeding 10% (10% increase vs stable, adjusted OR [aOR] 1.47, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11-1.95; 10% decrease vs stable, aOR 1.44, 95% CI 1.11-1.88) were significant predictive factors for decline in cognitive function. In subgroup analyses, the association between weight changes and cognitive decline was significant in males aged over 65 years and in normal BMI groups. Conclusion: Weight changes, both increases and decreases exceeding 10% of baseline, were significantly associated with declines in cognitive function among older adults in South Korea.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.4086-4097
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• 2015

This study examined the level of an emotional labour, depressive symptoms, and presenteeism of counselors working in a call center depending on socio-demographic characteristics, health-related factors, and job-related factors. Especially, the main purpose of a survey was to investigate the relevance to an emotional labour, the level of depressive symptoms and presenteeism. The research subjects were 304 counselors working at two call centers in Daejeon, and the survey was conducted from April 1, 2014 to May 31, 2014, using a structured self-administered questionnaire. As a result, the emotional labour, depressive symptoms and presenteeism experienced by the research subjects had a deep relation to many variables like socio-demographic characteristics, health-related factors and job-related factors. Especially, presenteeism showed a meaningful positive correlation with depressive symptoms and emotional labour factors. According to the result of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the meaningful variables related to presenteeism were age, the amount of a physical burden, the level of depressive symptoms, the surface action of an emotional labour. Therefore, to lower down the counselors' presenteeism, the development and implement of a mental healthcare program to control not only depressive symptoms and the level of an emotional labour is urgently needed.