• Journal of Korean Academy of Rural Health Nursing
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.24-32
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• 2007

Purpose: This study was done to provide statistical data for developing client-needs based welfare services in community welfare facilities. Method: The participants were 270 senior citizens, who visited a community welfare center in Gyunggi province, during the month of October 2005. They were asked to answer a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, $X^2$ test and Fisher's exact test were used to analyze the data from 221 of the elders. Results: 1. More than 50% of the respondents were women aged between 60 and 75, who had education levels above high school and who lived in apartments. Among the respondents, 54.3% lived separately from their children. 2. 70.0% of the respondents considered their health status as "good", even though they had more than one disease. Also 41% of the respondents were supported by their children, and 76.8% wanted jobs. 3. The respondents pointed out several programs such as languages, computer, singing class, physical activities (dances, billiards, Tai-chi and table tennis), needed to be included in the welfare center programs. Conclusions: Elders aged 60-75, educated above high school, living in an apartments, live alone or with spouse, and having frequent contact with children, were the most frequent utilizers of the welfare center. They want the welfare center programs in variety, including languages, computer, singing class, and physical activities.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Rural Health Nursing
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.111-119
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• 2007

Purpose: In this study consumers' preference for housing for elderly people was analyzed as well as the recognition by elders of silver town facilities, and their preference for service provided by silver town. The study was done to provide basic data for the development of silver town facilities that are low in cost and high in efficiency. Methods: A sample research was used in this study to analyze the understanding of old age, silver town, and service preference. Results: First, interest and intention to live in silver town was very positive, however low cost was also preferred and that is quite different to current silver towns of Korea. Second, women have more understanding of, requests for, and intention to move into silver town facilities than men. Women's demands for silver town facilities must be reflected in the development strategy of silver towns. Third, the most important part of activating silver town facilities is price strategy. Government political support is required in order to keep silver town move-in costs affordable. Fourth, silver towns must function as total service complex towns. Conclusion: This study is meaningful as efficient operation of silver town is suggested rather than facility degradation to achieve price reduction. This result is important to the development of silver towns based on consumer preference, as it suggests a development direction that is focused on securing differentiated services and programs.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.790-801
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• 1999

The purpose of this study was to generate a grounded theory of how families with kidney donor or recipient coped with kidney transplantations. Interview data from twelve families involved in kidney transplants was analyzed using the grounded theory method. Data analysis revealed that “protecting the family” was the main theme that represented family member experiences. In order to maintain family function and to protect the family from breaking up, family members had to adjust the family structure from the traditional style of a husband-centered family, to one that was patient health -centered. The process of this adjustment was a very long and difficult one, taking several years from the recognition of the kidney disease to the kidney transplants. Family members, especially spouses, employed nine different strategies to deal with various problems and conflicts which occurred during the process : 1) paying attention to the patient's illness and complications ; 2) accepting the patient's illness as the family's illness as well ; 3) managing the patient's illness and complications that occured ; 4) being thrifty ; 5)supporting the kidney donor ; 6) accepting and replacing the lost roles of the patient ; 7) keeping composure and encouraging the patient ; 8) sustaining the patient's independence ; 9) self-restraining sexual desires. These findings suggest that there is a developmental process where family members adjust to a kidney transplant over time. There is also a need for increased social and psychological health services for all family members over the course of kidney transplants.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.59-84
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• 1996

It is generally believed that the medical profession in Korea is an well-paid field along with legal profession. In this vein, the nursing is regarded one of well-paid profession. The actual data, however, reveals that nurses belong to low income bracket. We carefully compare the nurse's earnings with those of other professions. We selected 58 professions, which are similar in vocational characteristics and education background to nurses and conduct a regression analysis to estimate earning functions. Using the estimated coefficients, we project an optimum salary level for nurse, and compare it with the actual salary level. The estimated results show that the nurses are underpaid : their actual salary is less than the optimum level. We provide several explanations for this phenomenon : a tradition based on Confucian value, wage discrimination for women, and wage inequality among hospitals. Undercompensation will result either ratard professional development, or block the motivation for high quality of nursing care. If the current underpaying situation is not improved, a shortage of nurses along with an noticeable decline in the quality of medical services are expected. Therefore an adequate compensation for nurses must be properly assessed and addresed not only be health care authorities but also by legislators. Further research is needed to explain why there is such as wide salary inequality among nurses, and to find what cause it.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.101-114
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• 2008

Eater Seal, the child care experts, observes that children with disability significantly benefit from receiving appropriated care along side their peers. Typically developing children serve as role models from which children with disabilities learn age-appropriated communications and social behavior. Therefore the children with disability can actively participate in well-designed child care settings. But unfortunately in Seoul, Korea, only 2% of children with disability are taken care of in child care centers. And even the disabled children at the child care centers are mostly mentally or emotionally disabled because the building, programs and services of the centers are restrictive to the children with severe physical disabilities. This study reviewed Korean domestic physical environment of child care centers for children with disabilities. Questionnaire survey was conducted to 103 centers located in Seoul by mail. Our survey revealed that they need more areas for nursing room and special rooms and the accessibility to buildings has to be improved. Also, there are no elevators in all buildings surveyed. Accessibility to toilet is noted as significant problem, especially wet floors in toilets. In a nursing room, a space for psychological rest and special education is needed for children with mental disability. Technical specifications on how to make buildings and facilities accessible for the children with disability should be developed. The goal of this study is to provide basic information to develop domestic design guidelines to ensure that the child care centers are safe, convenient, and usable for everyone possible.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.201-212
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• 2002

This study was designed to identify the risk factors of unplanned readmission in a university hospital. The six-month discharge information from January to June, 2000 in a tertiary university hospital was used as a source of data through the medical record and hospital information system. To increase the effect of comparison. the data were collected by sampling 192 couples (384 patients) of unplanned readmission group through the matching by its disease groups, sex, and age. The accuracy of prediction for unplanned readmission was analyzed by constructing the predicted model of unplanned readmission through the logistic regression. The study results are as follows. The conditional logistic regression analysis was performed with nine variables at the significance level 0.05 through univariate analysis including residence, days after discharge, initial admission route, previous admission, transfer to special care unite, hospital stay days, medical care expenses, special cares, and laboratory and imaging services. As a result, the closer the patients live in Seoul and Gyeong-in area (Odds ratio=2.529, p=0.003), the shorter the days after discharge was (Odds ratio=0.600, p=0.000), and the more frequent admission rate was (Odds ratio=2.317, p=0.004), the more unplanned readmission was resulted. Also, the accuracy of prediction for data classification of this regression model showed $70.3\%$(032+83/306).

• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.47-57
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to understand experiences of successful aging of community-dwelling elderly living in the Korean community using mixed methods. This study is a mixed methods research using convergent parallel design. 483 elderly people living in the 2 cities were selected as subjects to collect quantitative data. For qualitative data collection, 6 elderly people participated. The level of successful aging for elderly people living at home scored an average of 4.30 ± .59 out of 5 points (4.46 ± .64 for self-efficacy, 4.31 ± .65 for good self-control, 4.29 ± .70 for satisfaction with children's success, and 4.26 ± .61 for partnership with spouses). The main themes of successful aging derived by interview were as follows: 1) fulfill responsibilities of raising children as parents, 2) establish a stable life to overcome difficulties, 3) accept the body being different from the past, and 4) live in harmony with people around them. Based on these results, it is necessary to provide useful health care services that can be used in the local community and to provide service utilization information through various routes in order to achieve a successful aging.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2003

Purpose : The objective of this study was the development and validation of a scale to measure the self-care of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) in Korea. Method: Self-care scale was developed based on the self-care activities patients had to carry out in order to manage their COPD. The original scale contained 34 items rated along a five-point Likert scale and was reviewed by 18 professional nurses and 10 Korean patients with COPD for content validity. Subsequently, patients with COPD were asked to complete this 23-item scale and further tests were done with the 125 useable responses. Result: Factor analysis identified eight factors-'maintaining a clean air way', 'taking medication', 'support from family', 'preventing infection', 'managing symptoms', 'breathing exercising', and 'taking in nutrition'. The internal consistency of the total scale was Cronbach's α=0.7226. These eight factors explained 60.8% of total variance. There was correlation among Korean Self-Care Scale score, administration level, and knowledge level but there was no correlation to patients' satisfaction with medical services. Conclusion: The 23 item questionnaire positively identified 8 areas defined important for COPD patients. Further studies are required to see how these can be integrated into patient education.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.60-74
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• 2009

This study purports to verify managerial effectiveness of the integrated delivery system(IDS) of Japanese health care institutions through comparing the managerial performance between hospital groups providing with both acute and nursing care and those with acute care only. Data on the managerial performance of 697 hospitals providing with nursing care together and 819 hospitals providing with acute care only were collected from Japanese Central Social Insurance Medical Councils 2001, 2003, 2005, and were analyzed using mean comparison test(t-test) between the two groups. The results revealed that there were significant differences between the two groups in such indicators as ratio of material cost, labor cost, depreciation rate, total margin, operating margin, average number of outpatient per day, average revenue of an inpatient per day, total amount of labor cost, gross revenue per employee, and labor productivity. However, we could not find out any consistent evidence which support the effect of integrated delivery system on the hospital managerial performance. Further discussion was made on the limitation of the study and future research agenda relevant to the topic.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Health Science
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.709-719
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• 2016

Purpose. The study verified the relationship between the mental retardation child mother's parenting stress, self-esteem and social supports. Methods. The subjects were 250 mothers who had their children with mental retardation educated and who experienced to receive social services in U City. They were asked to answer the questionnaire and 134 subjects resent the questionnaire. The survey information was analyzed by SPSS 18.0. Results. Sociodemographic characteristic effected on the parenting stress; In accordance with the severity of handicap, the level of the stress was different, self-esteem are the mother's educational attainment. The social supports in functional perspective are the religion. Conclusions. The relationship between the parenting stress and social support, self-esteem and parenting stress the both have negative relationship, More information support, emotional support, economic support, evaluating support get the less the parenting stress, and self-esteem have. The parenting stress and self esteem are highly related.