• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.139-152
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• 2022

Purpose: This study aims to describe and understand the meaning and nature of community health practitioners' coping with COVID-19. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 community health practitioners from August to October 2021, to describe and understand the nature of their coping with COVID-19. The collected data were examined and described based on Colaizzi's phenomenological method. Results: 16 theme clusters and five categories were derived from the community health practitioners' experience of coping with COVID-19. The categories derived were: a war that began without notice, a variety of correspondence tasks assigned, struggling to fulfill given roles, correspondence tasks becoming more systematic, and a fight that has not yet ended. Conclusion: Community health practitioners handled various response tasks related to COVID-19, and faithfully fulfilled their professional roles while performing the primary task of medical care. Hence, attention is required on issues related to the establishment of the national emergency healthcare system and improvement of professional competence of community health practitioners even after the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Furthermore, it is necessary to make ceaseless efforts to address those issues and, in order to do so, social interest and institutional support are needed.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.359-369
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• 2018

An essential measure to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAI) is to develop a consistent system of surveillance, thereby promoting a reliable situation diagnosis to perform efficient control for the problem. Patient-to-patient transmission of pathogens within the hospital plays a substantial role in the epidemiology of HAIs. Contamination of healthcare environments commonly occurs, including facilities surfaces (e.g., bed rails, bedside tables), drinking water, cooling tower water, endoscopic instruments, food, airborne, endotoxin test, sterile test and medical equipment, with pathogenic organisms. In addition, epidemiological analysis is performed by multi locus sequence tying, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis for active surveillance. Therefore, an environmental surveillance culture test for prevention improves patient safety and blocks infection agents. Effective infection control and increased safety are possible by controlling the national infection control system. In conclusion, this study contributes to an effective infection control system through the standardization of active surveillance culture laboratory and secure expertise as infection control specialist. The primary objective of the standardization is to improve the safety of the nation's healthcare system by reducing the rates of HAIs.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.30-38
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• 2022

Purpose: The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) in South Korea initiated a quality assessment (QA) program for blood transfusion healthcare services in 2020 to ensure patient safety and appropriate blood use. This study examines the quality of blood transfusion services since the first national QA program for blood transfusion services in Korea. Methods: We analyzed HIRA claims and QA investigation data based on inpatient medical records from all tertiary, general, and primary hospitals between October 2020 and March 2021. The target population was patients aged 18 years and older who received either total knee arthroplasty or red blood cell transfusion. The QA indicators for transfusion healthcare service consisted of four quality indicators and four monitoring indicators. Results: We analyzed the results of QA indicators for transfusion service from the medical records of 189,668 patients from 1,171hospitals and expressed indicators as proportions. The average results for evaluation indicators were as follows: transfusion checklist presence, 64.8%; irregular antibody tests, 61.8%; transfusions in which the hemoglobin levels before transfusion met the transfusion guidelines for patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty, 20.6%, and transfusions in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty, 59.3%. The average results for monitoring indicators were as follows: transfusion management implementation in medical institutions, 56.9%; preoperative anemia management in anemia patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty, 43.9%; one-unit transfusions, 82.5%; and the transfusion index. Conclusion: The quality of blood transfusion healthcare varied and the assessment revealed that there is scope for improvement. Hospitals require more effective blood transfusion management and this can be facilitated by providing feedback on the QA results about blood transfusion healthcare services to medical institutions, and by disclosing the results to the public.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.294-302
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• 2017

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to investigate the agreement between medical history questionnaire data and claims data and to identify the factors that were associated with discrepancies between these data types. Methods: Data from self-reported questionnaires that assessed an individual's history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, stroke, heart disease, and pulmonary tuberculosis were collected from a general health screening database for 2014. Data for these diseases were collected from a healthcare utilization claims database between 2009 and 2014. Overall agreement, sensitivity, specificity, and kappa values were calculated. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with discrepancies and was adjusted for age, gender, insurance type, insurance contribution, residential area, and comorbidities. Results: Agreement was highest between questionnaire data and claims data based on primary codes up to 1 year before the completion of self-reported questionnaires and was lowest for claims data based on primary and secondary codes up to 5 years before the completion of self-reported questionnaires. When comparing data based on primary codes up to 1 year before the completion of selfreported questionnaires, the overall agreement, sensitivity, specificity, and kappa values ranged from 93.2 to 98.8%, 26.2 to 84.3%, 95.7 to 99.6%, and 0.09 to 0.78, respectively. Agreement was excellent for hypertension and diabetes, fair to good for stroke and heart disease, and poor for pulmonary tuberculosis and dyslipidemia. Women, younger individuals, and employed individuals were most likely to under-report disease. Conclusions: Detailed patient characteristics that had an impact on information bias were identified through the differing levels of agreement.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.297-306
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• 2014

This paper is a descriptive study that aims to investigate attitudes towards menstruation, symptoms and coping behaviors in order to develop a program for building positive attitudes toward menstruation in primary school students. The mean age of menarche was 12.3 years, and students generally showed negative attitudes towards menstruation. Students who experienced menarche had relatively more positive attitudes than those who did not. However, no significant difference was exhibited. Menstrual symptoms occurred rarely or at a moderate level by showing a low score of 2.12 points. Of all sub-factors, 'pain' was the most serious. The most common coping behaviors during menstruation was 'I take a warm shower' and 'I take a rest or nap', while respondents rarely checked 'I take vitamin B supplements' and 'I take painkiller'. Based on the above findings, the study intends to perform a systematic study to further identify the factors affecting menstrual attitudes in primary school students. In addition, this paper suggests effective healthcare education on menstruation to build positive attitudes towards menstruation and education and counseling programs for adopting appropriate coping strategies to deal with menstrual symptoms.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.59 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2016

Objective : The aim of this multicenter, matched-pair study was to compare the outcomes of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and conventional external radiation therapy (RT) when used as a primary treatment in spine metastasis from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods : From 2005 to 2012, 28 patients underwent SRS as the primary treatment in spine metastasis from HCC. Based on sex, age, number of spine metastasis, Child-Pugh classification, interval from original tumor to spine metastasis, and year of treatment, 28 patients who underwent RT were paired. Outcomes of interest were pain relief, progression free survival, toxicities, and further treatment. Results : The perioperative visual analog scale (VAS) decrease was larger in SRS group than in RT group, but the difference was not significant (3.7 vs. 2.8, p=0.13). When pain medication was adjusted, the number of patients with complete (n=6 vs.3) or partial (n=12 vs.13) relief was larger in SRS group than in RT group; however, the difference was not significant (p=0.83). There was no significant difference in progression free survival (p=0.48). In SRS group, 32.1% of patients had 1 or more toxicities whereas the percentage in RT group was 63.0%, a significant difference (p=0.04). Six SRS patients and 7 RT patients received further intervention at the treated segment. Conclusion : Clinical and radiological outcome were not significantly different between the two treatments. Toxicities, however, were more prevalent in the RT group.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.109-121
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to find out primary policies for reducing PM(particulate matter) as well as for improving the quality of life. Serious particulate matters cause to diverse healthcare and economy problems including business transactions. Unfortunately, until recently there are very few researches regarding the decision-making process for particulate matter policies. This study has applied the AHP(Analytic Hierarchy Process) method to develop cooperative policy making processes. The upper layer of this hierarchy analysis consists of four parts, i.e., transportation, production facility, living environment, and urban planning management. And each upper layer parts has their own three policies. 25 experts including policy-makers, academic researchers and industrial specialists have decided the primary policies and directions. The most significant PM policy is the mandatory reduction of air pollution and suspension of factory operation in the production industry. The results of this study can lead to guidelines for making environmental policies.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.141-148
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• 2021

There are very scant data on the epidemiology of primary immunodeficiency diseases (PIDs) in Korea. Here we attempted to estimate the PID epidemiology and disease burden in Korea. A systematic review was performed of studies retrieved from the PubMed, KoreaMed, and Google Scholar databases. Studies on PIDs published in Korean or English between January 2001 and November 2018 were analyzed. The number of PID patients and the healthcare costs were estimated from Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) Korea data for 2017. A total of 398 PID patients were identified from 101 reports. Immunodeficiencies affecting cellular and humoral immunity were reported in 11 patients, combined immunodeficiency with associated or syndromic features in 40, predominantly antibody deficiencies in 144, diseases of immune dysregulation in 58, congenital defects of phagocytes in 104, defects in the intrinsic and innate immunity in 1, auto-inflammatory disorders in 4, complement deficiencies in 36, and phenocopies of PID in none. From the HIRA reimbursement data, a total of 1,162 outpatients and 306 inpatients were treated for 8,166 and 6,149 days, respectively. In addition, reimbursement was requested for 8,200 outpatient and 1,090 inpatient cases and $1,924,000 and $4,715,000 were reimbursed in 2017, respectively. This study systematically reviewed published studies on PID and analyzed the national open data system of the HIRA to estimate the disease burden of PID, for the first time in Korea.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.115-123
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• 2019

Objective: This study was conducted to examine the effects of a health promotion program on the health condition of rural elderly women implemented at primary health care posts using Korean Frailty Index. Methods: The research was designed a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest setting. The participants in this study were 50 residents (intervention group: 25, control group: 25) selected from 4 villages 2 primary health care posts in J city Gyeongsangnam-do. The health promotion program was conducted at the primary health care posts twice a week for 12 weeks. This program consisted of basic exercises(Gukseondo + Theraband muscle strength training) and additional activities(including modified Theraband activity, rubber ball exercise, ball massage, nutrition class, singing class). Collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, paired t-test, and repeated measures ANOVA with SPSS 21.0. Results: Results of the health promotion program showed that the health conditions(measured by perceived health status, frailty score, upper/lower flexibility, maximum grip strength, dynamic balance test Timed Up and Go) of the experimental group(25) all statistical significantly improved. Conclusion: Study findings indicate that the health promotion program implemented at primary health care posts on rural elderly women is effective and can contribute to a developed health promotion program for local residents in the future.

• Korean Journal of Neurotrauma
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2017

Cranioplasty is an in evitable operation conducted after decompressive craniectomy (DC). The primary goals of cranioplasty after DC are to protect the brain, achieve a natural appearance and prevent sinking skin flap syndrome (or syndrome of the trephined). Furthermore, restoring patients' functional outcome and supplementing external defects helps patients improve their self-esteem. Although early cranioplasty is preferred in recent year, optimal timing for cranioplasty remains a controversial topic. Autologous bone flaps are the most ideal substitute for cranioplasty. Complications associated with cranioplasty are also variable, however, post-surgical infection is most common. Many new materials and techniques for cranioplasty are introduced. Cost-benefit analysis of these new materials and techniques can result in different outcomes from different healthcare systems.