• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.201-209
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• 2013

Background: The study was conducted to investigate the current status of the occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) in the construction industry and the effect of OHSMS on accident rates. Differences of awareness levels on safety issues among site general managers and occupational health and safety (OHS) managers are identified through surveys. Methods: The accident rates for the OHSMS-certified construction companies from 2006 to 2011, when the construction OHSMS became widely available, were analyzed to understand the effect of OHSMS on the work-related injury rates in the construction industry. The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency 18001 is the certification to these companies performing OHSMS in South Korea. The questionnaire was created to analyze the differences of OHSMS awareness between site general managers and OHS managers of construction companies. Results: The implementation of OHSMS among the top 100 construction companies in South Korea shows that the accident rate decreased by 67% and the fatal accident rate decreased by 10.3% during the period from 2006 to 2011. The survey in this study shows different OHSMS awareness levels between site general managers and OHS managers. The differences were motivation for developing OHSMS, external support needed for implementing OHSMS, problems and effectiveness of implementing OHSMS. Conclusion: Both work-related accident and fatal accident rates were found to be significantly reduced by implementing OHSMS in this study. The differences of OHSMS awareness between site general managers and OHS managers were identified through a survey. The effect of these differences on safety and other benefits warrants further research with proper data collection.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.192-201
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• 2005

The Korean government had introduced the industrial safety & hygiene consultant(ISHC) system to improve worksite health and safety level by providing specialized industrial safety & hygiene(S&H) services in 1996. Despite of initial hopeful expectation it has been said that this plan might fail to settled down and maintain its purpose. This study was designed to investigate operational issues and problems concerning the ISHC system, that would direct the way of change and future role. Questionnaire were sent to ISHC, professional engineer, agencies for occupational injury prevention, S&H specialist in the corporation nationwide and totally 256 people responded to in having 62.7% of response rate. The result of this study were as follows; 1. One hundred and forty two cases of safety assessment and 27 cases of process safety reports were the six years' results since 1996 the ISHC program had first been introduced. This results showed that injury prevention activities of ISHC had been stagnant. 2. The 78.8% of respondents had negative opinion about injury prevention activities of ISHC program. 3. The operational problems of ISHC were lack of understanding of company about ISHC, low systematization of work items, duty overlapping with agencies for occupational injury prevention, low support by government. in order. 4. It was suggested that abolition of ISHC and promotion of professional engineer system should be considered. 5. To promote professional engineer system it was suggested that the professional engineer could conduct consulting service and ISHC should be integrated with the expert system.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.144-155
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• 1997

In December 1990, Occupational Safety and Health Law was amended to reinforce employer's responsibilities on employees' health and safety. Among the amended law it was important to expand the role of an occupational health nurse to the role of an occupational health manager. An occupational health manager should take charge of coordinating periodic health examination and environmental hazard evaluation, providing primary care, monitoring employees' health status, giving the workplace walk-through, selecting safe protection equipment, providing health information, counseling and health education, independently. This position of occupational health nurse is equivalent to the role of doctors or occupational hygienists. In 1991, government made a master plan to prevent occupational disease and injury. Under the plan, Korea Industrial Nursing Association (KINA) was established in 1994 with the purpose of improving health services and upgrading career opportunities for members. Therefore, this study was designed to analyze the transition of occupational health nursing education with the changes of law and policy in Korea between 1991 and 1996. In details, it was to analyze the rate of school providing occupational health nursing practice based lecture, lecture hours, lecture contents in undergraduate curriculum, program contents of graduate school, kinds of continuing education, etc. For this purpose, we conducted survey two times. In February 1991, baseline study was conducted with all nursing programs in Korea (19 BSN programs and 43 nursing departments of junior college). From April to May in 1996, the second survey was conducted with all nursing programs (38 BSN programs and 69 junior colleges). The first response rate was 66.1% and the second was 40.6%. Structured questionnaires were mailed to the deans or the community health nursing faculties. In the case of graduate school, telephone survey was conducted with 10 school of public health or environmental health area. Data from the yearbook of Industrial Safety Training Institute (ISTI), the history of Korea Industrial Health Association, and the journals of KINA were also included in the analysis. As the results, we found that there were remarkable improvement in undergraduate and graduate programs, obligatory as well as voluntary continuing education in terms of occupational health nursing expertise between 1991 and 1996. 1) The number of school providing occupational health nursing practice-based lecture was increased with the rate from 7.3% to 25.6%. The rate of school giving over 15 class-hours was increased from 33.3% to 46.6%. 2) Content areas were composed of introduction of occupational health, occupational epidemiology, industrial hygiene, occupational disease and injury, law and policy, health education, concept of occupational health nursing, role of occupational health nurse, occupational health nursing process, etc. Of content areas, occupational health nursing process was more emphasized with the increased rate from 43.9% to 88.4%. 3) In the case of graduate school, occupational health programs were increased from 4 to 10. One of them has developed occupational health nursing program as an independent course since 1991. 4) The law increased educational hours from 28 hours to 36 hours for introductory course at the time of appointment, and from 14 hours to 24 hours every 2 years for continuing education. Course contents were Occupational safety and health law, introduction of occupational health, health education methodology, planning and evaluation, periodic health exam, occupational disease care, primary care, emergency care, management, industrial environment evaluation, etc. In 1996, Korea Industrial Nursing Association has begun to provide continuing education after Industrial Safety Training Institute. 5) Various educational programs in voluntary base were developed such as monthly seminar, CE articles, annual academic symposium, etc. It was shown that changes of law and policy led rapid growth of occupational health nursing education in various levels. From this trend, it is expected that occupational health nurse expertise be continuously to be enhanced in Korea. Legal and political supports should proceed for the development of occupational health nursing in early stage.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.224-234
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• 2018

Purpose: In this study, we attempted to analyze the occupational accident experience rate by working life cycle of Korean workers considering entrance and turnover in their jobs. The specific goal of this study was to calculate the accident experience rate according to workers' turnover history and previous accident experience. Methods: We constructed a cumulative data set of 90,338 cases of workers' accident experiences in their jobs from the Fourth Korean Working Conditions Survey. The accident experience rates according to workers' turnover and previous accident experiences were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Results: In this study, the cumulative accident experience rate of Korean workers was found to be 5.2%. It was confirmed that the accident experience rate of workers increased as the turnover frequencies increased. In addition, we analyzed only the data of the workers who had experienced turnover and found that the accident experience rate after turnover increased about 7.5 times when workers had experienced accidents in the past. Conclusion: To prevent occupational accidents in workers, safety strategies should consider a worker's previous job history and injury experiences. It will also be necessary to focus preventive efforts on new and young workers through ongoing monitoring and on-the-job training.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.83-88
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• 2019

The 7,993 cases of Survey Report of Fatal Industrial Accidents conducted jointly by the MEOL and the KOSHA for the recent seven years(2007-2013) were categorized according to personal and occupational characteristics, industry types, business sizes, job types, activities at the time accident, types of accidents, material agents(assailing materials), unsafe conditions, and unsafe acts. And it is found that among the 72.2 percent of fatal occupational accidents in the construction and manufacturing industries are caused by falling, sticking, bumping and being caught under objects & overturning. For this study, through the empirical analysis on causes of fatal industrial accidents, was used to identity high risk groups based on total data of 7,993 victims of occupational accidents. An annual fatal occupational injury (FOI) rate per 10,000 workers was about 0.47‱. The middle-aged group and the elderly group showed the highest FOI rates per 10,000 workers (0.73‱, 0.80‱), and the daily workers showed the highest FOI rate (1.46‱), and the craft and related trades workers showed the highest FOI rate (2.17‱). In case of industry type the mining industry (7.26‱) showed the highest FOI rate, followed by the sewerage, waste management, materials recovery and remediation activity industry (3.91‱) and the construction industry (2.71‱). The primary high risk target group that requires a strategy designed to reduce fatal occupation injuries caused by falling and bumping & contact(collision) is the construction industry, and the secondary high risk target group in the construction industry is classified as the equipment, machine operating and assembling workers in the construction industry, those aged 50 years old and above need the prevention measures against bumping & contact(collision) and being caught under an object & falling(objects), while those aged less than 50 years old need prevention measures against falling(persons).

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.43-46
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• 2005

The construction workers might be at the risk of many occupational injuries and illnesses. To protect workers from various hazards, industrial health and hygiene systems were specified for the construction workers by law. It is important to know the actual health and safety(H&S) conditions by tasks and the characteristics of injuries and illnesses of construction workers. This study was designed to investigate the actual conditions of construction workers exposed to various harmful substances and work elements including evaluation of health status of each worker and general H&S system. Questionnaire was sent to 600 construction workers nationwide and totally 367 people responded to it having 61.67% of response rate. The common construction hazards were dust(29.6%), noise(19.3%), repetitive motions(12.0%), handling excessive heavy materials(11.2%) in order. The repetitive motions and handling heavy materials related to muscle disorders accounted for 23.2%. The accident and injury types were in order of overexertion, falling, overturning, dropping or flying, electric shock, collision, etc.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.129-138
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• 2014

As S. Korea is becoming an "aged society", workers in the country would be exposed to higher risk of workplace injuries due to their reducing work abilities as they are getting old. To identify the relationship between the work ability and the incident rate of workplace injuries, the work ability index (WAI) scores were surveyed from 409 workers occupied in different manufacturing industries reside on north GyoengBuk area. The workplace injury statistics in the year of 2010 for the corresponding industries were analyzed and summarized with the WAI scores by age groups, years of service, and sizes of business. The results showed the WAI scores of the workers occupied in the higher risk of workplace injury was lower than that of the workers of the lower risk. It means the lower the WAI score, the higher the chance of being injured during the task. It is concluded that appropriate correlation exists between the WAI scores of workers and the incident rate of workplace injury. It is recommended to administrate individual work abilities of aged workers in order to keep low rate of workplace injuries in upcoming aged and highly aged society.

• The Journal of Korean society of community based occupational therapy
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.23-30
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• 2014

Objective : The purpose of this study is to investigate the awareness and interest rate of occupational therapy in Korea, and to establish basic data for further development of occupational therapy through the results. Methods : This survey was conducted between October 1th and December 31st 2013 and 308 questionnaires were collected from university student and public. The questionnaires of 308 respondents were analyzed through Cosstabs, Descriptive statistics, Frequency study and t-test, ANOVA analysis using SPSS ver. 18.0. Results : There was a significant difference in the awareness rate of occupational therapy by age and occupation (p<.01). People who were knowledgeable about occupational therapy had a friend or relative related to occupational therapy(33.5%), or were informed through media(37.1%). Positive responses regarding whether responders wanted to find more about occupational therapy were high(53%), and publicity(63.5%) turned out to be the most effective method for advancement. Conclusion : Although there is a lack of public awareness on occupational therapy, high percentage of responders showed positive responses in receiving occupational therapy when they get an injury in the future, and furthermore, learn more about occupational therapy. Based on this result, it is clear that high percentage of people were showing interest to occupational therapy. It could be conjectured that active publicity through internet or media may be effective.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.310-316
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• 2024

Background: The wood-processing industry has historically exhibited high rates of occupational hazards resulting in illness and injury. One of the major causes of high injury rates is small firm size, as resource constraints generally preclude hiring safety officers. This study examined the effect of a safety leadership training program that included coaching for managers on workers' safety behaviors and safety climate in three wood-processing companies. Methods: One or two managers at each site participated in this study. The manager training consisted of safety leadership education, safety observation, positive or corrective feedback on workers' behaviors, goal setting, and low-cost rewards for meeting goals. The dependent variable was the percentage of safe employee behaviors recorded on a critical behavior checklist developed for this study. Safety climate was measured before and after the intervention. An AB multiple baseline design across settings was adopted. After the baseline (A), the training program (B) was introduced to each site at different points in time. Results: After the introduction of safety leadership training, the mean rate of safety compliance increased by 15.3%, from 80.38% to 95.68%, and safety climate scores increased significantly from an average of 3.2 to 3.47. Conclusion: These results suggest that safety leadership coaching can be effective in improving safety management in small sawmilling sites. Implications, limitations, and possible future research directions are discussed.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.9-18
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• 2011

The occupational safety and health expenses in construction since 1988 has contributed significantly to the reduction of injury occurrence rate. But the appropriation standards for the Occupational Safety and Health Expenses in Construction(OSHEC) have been pointed out so many issues. The purpose of this study is to present ways to improve the appropriation standards for OSHEC through the reviewing of several issues about the current system and analysis of existing statistical data. Based on the result of the research, it is proposed the new model for OSHEC.