• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.114-120
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• 2017

The hospital standardized mortality ratio (HSMR) is a widely used generic measure for assessing quality of hospital care in many countries. However, the validity of HSMR as a quality indicator is still controversial. We critically reviewed characteristics of HSMR and suggested how to use HSMR as a quality indicator in the Korean setting. The association between HSMR and other quality measures of hospital care is inconclusive. In addition current HSMR model has shortcomings in risk adjustment because of the lack of clinical data, accuracy of disease coding, coding variation among hospitals, end-of-life care issues, and so on. Therefore, HSMR should be used as an indicator for improvement, not for judgement such as public reporting and pay-for-performance. More efforts will be needed to tackle practical and methodological weaknesses of HSMR in the Korean setting.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.300-311
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• 2017

Purpose: There are many forest and outdoor programs being offered but systematic reviews of effects are lacking. This study was done to identify content, format, and strategies of forest therapy programs for elementary school students. Methods: Literature search using keywords in English and Korean was performed using 6 electronic databases in December 2016. Search participants were elementary school students and interventions conducted in the forest. Seventeen forest therapy studies were selected for evaluation. Risk of Bias Assessment tool for non-randomized study was used for quality assessment. Results: All studies were quasi-experimental designs. Forest therapy programs included various activities in forests such as experience of five senses, meditation in the forest, walking in the forest, ecological play, observation of animals and insects. All studies used psychosocial health variables and forest healing programs had positive effects on sociality, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, stress, aggression, anger, and school adjustment. Limitations of these studies were vague reporting of the study, lack of ethical review and rigorous research designs. Conclusion: Forest therapy for elementary school child can be an effective way to improve psychosocial health. Future studies with rigorous study designs are needed to assess long-term effects of forest therapy on physical and psychosocial health.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.119-123
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• 2014

This study was intended to investigate food habits, dietary variety and the effects of nutrient intake of female college students. Food habits such as regularity of meal time, repast of breakfast, lunch, and supper, and duration of meal were assessed via a self reporting questionnaire, 24 hrs recall method for nutrient intake was obtained from 155 female college students in Yangju-si. Dietary variety was assessed by dietary diversity score(DDS). The mean height and weight of the subjects were $161.25{\pm}3.52cm$ and $52.26{\pm}4.52kg$, respectively. The dietary habits of female college students was generally inadequate. In the survey of dietary habits, the ratio of skipping breakfast 3~6 days a week in total subjects was 87.09%, showing a rather higher ratio of skipping breakfast. In the evaluation of nutrient intakes by DDS, subjects who had higher DDS had significantly higher nutrient intakes of energy, protein, carbohydrate, fiber, calcium, phosphate, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C, and cholesterol(p<0.05). There was a great difference in nutrient intakes, suggesting the risk of nutritional imbalance. These findings suggest that nutritional education based on female college students' eating variety and dietary habits(regularity of meal time, skipping breakfast and night snacks per week, and duration of meal) may be required to improve dietary variety. it is considered that the improvement in dietary habits will contribute to the improvement of nutrition.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.41-46
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• 2012

Adverse drug reaction (ADR) is a global problem of major concern in health care. ADRs can be accrued in any organs or systems. However, cardiovascular ADRs could be a more serious problem if they are irreversible or severe. For this reason, this study was conducted to analyze pattern and severity of cardiovascular ADRs, and suspicious medication. Total 646 reports including cardiovascular ADRs reported to the KFDA between January and June 2010 were analyzed. Amlodipine besylate (36 reports, 3.3%), iopromide (29 reports, 2.7%), tramadol HCl (28 reports, 2.6%) were most suspicious drugs that occurred cardiovascular ADRs. The most common cardiovascular ADRs were hypotension( 236 reports, 33.1%), palpitation (134 reports, 18.8%), and hypertension (89 reports, 12.5%). The most frequent ADRs were occurred in the age group of more than 60. This result could be of help to prescribers and other healthcare providers to predict and prevent cardiovascular ADRs. Also this study suggested that patients with cardiovascular ADR risk factors should be intensively monitored during the medications.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.957-964
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• 2004

Herbal medicines are increasingly used to treat various diseases and lots of studies have been reported that they had benefits in treating and preventing of diseases. But organic toxicity is increasingly recognized as herbal medicines become more popular in industrialized countries. Some herbal products potentially benefit people with lots of diseases, however these benefits remain generally unproved in humans, and a greater awareness for potential adverse effects is required. A herb containing a wide variety of, mostly unknown, substances may well include some with unwanted effects. This review focuses on emerging organic toxicities that have been observed associated with various herbal preparations involving the liver, kidney, and heart, and patterns of organ injury, potential risk factors for organic toxicities. In addition to the potential for organic toxicities, drug drug interactions between herbal medicines and conventional agents may affect the efficacy and safety of concurrent medical therapy. Appropriate reporting and regulatory system to monitor herbal toxicity are required, in conjunction with ongoing scientific evaluation of the potential benefits of phytotherapy.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.256-261
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• 2004

We report a case of severe(gradeV) unilateral vesicoureteral reflux(VUR) without any renal damage in a 6-month-old boy through the early sil)ling screening test for VUR, whose old brother had reflux nephropathy. The early detection of VUR aroused us to take special precautions to prevent urinary tract infection in this patient. We believe that this approach was helpful to reduce the risk of renal damage in this patient and are reporting the case with a brief review of related literatures. It is our firm suggestion that screening for vesicoureteral reflux should be carried out in every child who has siblings with refluf nephrouathy.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.629-638
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• 2003

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of knowledge and health belief on osteoporosis preventive health behaviors. Methods: The subjects of this study were 266 middle-aged women. Data were collected using a self-reporting questionnaire with 101 questions. The period of data collection was from the 3rd of January to the 28th of February 2003. Data were analyzed using SPSS 10.0 PC+ program. Results: The results were summarized as follows: 1. The average score of knowledge about osteoporosis was 16.93 out of 27. Particularly, middle-aged women had knowledge more about osteoporosis prevention measures than about risk factors. 2. Knowledge, self efficacy and barriers were significantly correlated with osteoporosis preventive health behaviors. 3. As for the relationship between subjects' general characteristics and their health preventive behaviors, the size of living district, economic status, BMI. family history of osteoporosis and perception of health status were found to have significant effects on health preventive behaviors. Conclusions: According to the results presented above, preventive health behaviors may be promoted by increasing knowledge and perceived self-efficacy as well as decreasing individuals' perceived barriers through health education.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.581-585
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• 2010

As developers and testers today we all suffer from increasing project complexity, the risks of late defect discovery, repetitive manual processes, and the risk of release delays. In this paper, we introduce an effective framework for automated testing to help solve such problems. Those that are new to testing do not need to delve into complex automation tools or test scripts. This framework helps automate the distribution, execution and results analysis of test cases. It also aids communication among the various stakeholders, using tables for representing tests and for reporting the results of automatically checking those tests. This paper describes the practices and benefits of using the proposed framework.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.74-86
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• 2016

Objectives: This article aims to review clinical studies related to traditional Korean medicine (TKM) for cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI) up to date. Methods: EMBASE, Pubmed and eight Korean databases were searched for clinical studies about TKM for CRCI up to July 2016. We selected articles about subjects with cancer, using TKM interventions including acupuncture, moxibustion or herbal medicine, containing assessment about cognitive function. Results: Two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and one randomized controlled feasibility study were included. Selected studies were containing assessments about cognitive function but not as primary outcomes. The three studies included one acupuncture study and two herbal-medicine studies. Only one herbal-medicine study showed improvement in cognitive function. Conclusions: Few clinical studies mainly focusing CRCI treated with TKM have been performed and have shown contradictory results until now. Future studies should be performed considering findings from pre-clinical and clinical studies altogether, and they should be controlled to minimize risk of bias thorough out overall courses of designing, conducting and reporting them.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.212-220
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• 2011

Purpose: This study was to investigate the prevalence & types of workplace violence toward nurses in hospitals, and to understand nurse's coping response, cause of violence and prevention strategy. Methods: The data were collected from 254 nurses working in 9 hospitals in Jeju Province by the self-report from June to August 2010. Results: The respondents experienced unpleasant or insulting words (89.8%), verbal threat (38.2%), physical threat (67.7%), physical injury (32.7%), severe physical injury (2.8%), and sexual harassment (26.4%) during the last one year. The frequent offenders were patients, patients' family and physicians in order. The causes of violence which nurses perceived were personality of offenders (76.4%), lack of assessment of aggressive patients or care givers (42.1%), and lack of explanation to patients or caregivers (33.5%). They reported that coping strategies for workplace violence were 'established reporting system (63.4%)', 'building a cooperative circumstances within team members (58.3%)', and 'formulation of hospital policies for violence prevention and coping (54.3%)'. Conclusion: These findings showed nurses are at considerable risk for workplace violence, and they experience various types of violence from patients, caregivers, and physicians. We suggest that hospitals formulate appropriate policies, guidelines and programs to prevent and cope with workplace violence in hospitals.