• Journal of muscle and joint health
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.241-257
• /
• 2000

Rheumatoid arthritis as one of the chronic illness requiring management in long period of time puts great burden to patients, their family and society. For patients with chronic illnesses, providing a social support is important and the most important source comes from spouses. Therefore we assessed burden of husbands of female rheumatoid arthritic patients and also found out the factors affecting burden. The sample of study was 107 female rheumatoid arthritic patients and their spouses. The tool of assessing spouses' burden was the revised version of subjective and objective parameters developed by Montgomery et al.(1985). The results are as follows: 1. General characteristics of patients and spouses: The mean age of the patients was 48 years. Educational level of patients was high school 41.1%. The mean age of the spouses was 51years. Educational level of spouses was mostly high school(40.2%) and college(29.9%) graduate. The mean marital period was 23.4years. Average income per month was 1,609,000 won. The average duration since diagnosis was 9.4years. As a therapy, 67.3% chose standard drug therapy. Average rating of discomfort by patient was 3.05(range 1-5) and that of severity was 3.48 and that of dependency was 2.58. The husband's rating of their spouses disease severity was 3.68. 2. Husbands' burden: The average burden in subjective items was 21.61(range 6-36) and objective items was 35.24(range 10-60). The average of total burden was 56.59(range 16-96). 3. Husband's total burden correlated with patient's age, educational level of patients, therapy method, patient's level of discomfort, patient's severity, patient's level of dependence, husband's recognition of level of severity in statistical level. Husband's objective burden correlated with patient's age, educational level of patient, patient's level of discomfort, husband's recognition of level of severity. Husband's subjective burden correlated with patient's age, educational level of patients, therapy method, patient's severity, patient's level of dependence, husband's recognition of level of severity. 4. Linear correlation analysis on burden: The husbands' total burden is explained in 37 7% by husband's recognition of level of severity and husband's age. The husbands' objective burden is explained in 31.2% by patient's level of dependence, husband's age, husband's recognition of level of severity. The husbands' subjective burden is explained in 26.7% by husband's recognition of level of severity and patient's age. In conclusion, husbands' level of burden is affected by many factors and therefore nursing strategy for relieving burden of middle aged husbands should be individualized taking these factors into consideration.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.32 no.6
• /
• pp.511-516
• /
• 2013

Objective: The objective of this study is designing an optimal hand tool through maximum grip force study accordance to the hand grip span. Background: In order to prevent musculoskeletal diseases, studies on hand tool design are proceeding based on grip strength, finger force, and contribution of individual finger force on total grip strength. However, experimental apparatus using a tool that is actually used in work place was almost non-existent. Method: 19 males were participated in an experiment. Using the load cell inserted real plier, finger force, grip strength, and subjective discomfort rate of both hands (dominant and non-dominant) were measured in 5 different hand grip span(45mm, 50mm, 60mm, 70mm, and 80mm). Results: There was significant difference(p<0.001) of total grip strength, individual finger force and subjective discomfort rating according to various hand grip span(45, 50, 60, 70, and 80mm). Also, statistically significant different(p<0.001) was shown between the dominant hand and non-dominant hand. In addition, individual finger force in maximum grip was in order of middle finger, ring finger, index finger, and little finger. Conclusion: Optimal grip span of pliers that exerting maximum grip strength is 50~60mm. Application: This finding is expected to be used for designing proper pliers.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.381-395
• /
• 2016

Objectives The aim of this study was to report improvements on the symptoms of Flushing for three soyangin female patients after using sasang constitutional medicines. Methods The patients were diagnosed with Soyangin Symptomatology and treated with Soyangin sasang constitutional medicines. The patient's subjective symptoms of flushing and discomfort in sleeping were observed using the Visual Analogue Scale(VAS) respectively during the treatment period. And the patient's subjective symptoms of the pain were observed using Numerical Rating Scale(NRS). The period of the patient's defecation interval were also observed. Results and Concluions The symptoms of flushing, discomfort in sleeping and the pain improved remarkedly in all respects. In conclusion, this study shows that Sasang Constitutional Medicine can be an effective treatment for Soyangin patient with Flushing.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.325-330
• /
• 2021

In this Case Report, a patient with Buerger's disease who had a leg amputation below his lower right knee and a vascular bypass of right leg, developed a wound caused by his prosthetic leg and subjective discomfort. The patient received skin flap surgery but the wound did not heal properly. He was admitted to the Korean Medicine Hospital where his wound, right leg coldness, and phantom pain were treated with combined Korean medicine. The patient was hospitalized again where he underwent micro-drilling surgery. The patient was re-admitted to the Korean Medicine Hospital where he received combined Korean medicine treatment (CKMT) and carbon arc light treatment (CALT) for his wound, leg coldness, stiffness, and hypoplasia. The temperature of his right leg increased, the numeric rating scale score for assessing pain fell from 5 to 1.5, and subjective discomfort was reduced (< 20%) suggesting this may be an effective treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.108-114
• /
• 2000

The work posture impose additional stress upon human workers so that it should be carefully considered in designing works. However, we have a lot of manufacturing plants which convert their standing workplace to sedentary one. To confirm the validity of that trend, the authors conducted an experimental study, and compared the results. The results of the EMG and the self-cognitive symptoms, in general, showed a correspondent trend that the sedentary work posture was rated more comfortable. At the beginning of the work, complaint of the lowerback was higher whereas that of the lower leg and the feet went higher as the time elapsed. If the weight of workpiece were heavier than 500g, increasing rate of bodily discomfort in the sedentary posture were greater than that of the standing posture. In the meanwhile, the standing posture was consistently superior to the sedentary posture in its performance. Thus, in conclusion, for a light assembly work, sedentary work posture would be recommendable because bodily discomfort would be larger irrespective of the small increase of performance increase.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
• /
• 1997.10a
• /
• pp.433-436
• /
• 1997

Automobile assembly tasks consist of many kinds of manual work which are very stressful to workers because of repetitive poor working postures and dealing heavy weights. To decrease the level of workload, it is necessary to evaluate the workload quantitatively. In this study, a workload evaluation method based on EMG was experimentally evaluated. We measured EMG at 6 main muscles with 2 healthy male workers during doing 9 assembly tasks, which were selected as high workload jobs. The tasks were decomposed into 36 elementary tasks. The workload was calculated through an equation with %MVIS and work duration time. To evaluate the result, subjective discomfort on the tasks was assessed by 29 workers. By the calculated workload, we were able to ranked the workload of tasks, elementary tasks. The comparison between the EMG-based workload and subjective rating showed a positive correlation(P-value=0.0246). We think it is possible to adapt the EMG-based workload evaluation technique to all assembly tasks by expending the experi- ment size.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.413-423
• /
• 2001

Low back disorders (LBDs) are one of the most common and costly work-related musculoskeletal disorders. One of the major possible risk factors of LBDs is to work with static and awkward trunk postures, especially in a complex trunk posture involving flexion, twisting and lateral bending simultaneously. This study is to examine the effect of complex trunk postures on the postural stresses using a psychophysical method. Twelve healthy male students participated in an experiment, in which 29 different trunk postures were evaluated using the magnitude estimation method. The results showed that subjective discomfort significantly increased as the levels of trunk flexion, lateral bending and rotation increased. Significant interaction effects were found between rotation and lateral bending or flexion when the severe lateral bending or rotation were assumed, indicating that simultaneous occurrence of trunk flexion, lateral bending and rotation increases discomfort ratings synergistically. A postural workload evaluation scheme of trunk postures was proposed based on the angular deviation levels from the neutral position. Each trunk posture was assigned numerical stress index depending upon its discomfort rating, which was defined as the ratio of discomfort of a posture to that of its neutral posture. Four qualitative action categories for the stress index were also provided in order to enable practitioners to apply corrective actions appropriately. The proposed scheme is expected to be applied to several field areas for evaluating trunk postural stresses.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
• /
• v.23 no.9
• /
• pp.6-16
• /
• 2009

Recently, additional pedestrian passages are installed on urban tunnels in Korea. The lighting environment of the pedestrian passages should be appropriate to pedestrians. In this study, illuminance and discomfort glare where measured for determining the actual impact that pedestrians will be influenced by the tunnel lighting condition. Illuminance and discomfort glare were measured in 'S tunnel' which is located in Dong-Jack, Seoul, at day and night. And field survey on illuminance and discomfort glare was conducted to identify subjective responses of pedestrians. From the results of measurements and the survey, it is known that the lighting environment of the pedestrian passage in the tunnel is slightly dark especially at day time. UGR values which were measured at night were also higher than that at day. The results and methods of this study will be useful data for the 'Environmental Improvement of Pedestrian passage in Tunnel' project which was begun by Seoul City at 1st December 2008.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.99-107
• /
• 1989

This study explored differences in how medical and surgical patients compare on the degree of hospital stress and their subjective physical status. Subjects were 343 medical and surgical patients in five university hospitals in Seoul and Taegu. They responded to the Hospital Stress Rating Scale and a self-report on physical status. The controlled variables were age, education, number of previous hospitalizations and seriousness of the illness. Medical and surgical patient differences on nine factors of the hospital stres scale and nine areas of physical conditions were reported as follows edplored : 1. 1) There was not a statistically significant difference at the .05 level in the total mean score for hospital stress between medical patients and surgical patients. 2) The mean score of the factor lack of information (M＝2.308) for medical patients was higher than the mean score (M＝2.064) of the surgical patients. 3) The mean scores of the factor of discomfort (M＝2.130), loss of independence (M＝1.889) for surgical patients were higher than for medical patients. 2. 1) There was a statistically significant difference at the .05 level in the total mean score for physical status between medical patients and surgical patients. 2) The mean scores were lower in subjective physical status for surgical patients(S) than for medical patients (M) ; stomach condition (S : M＝2.8433, M : M＝3.0-000), self-assistance(S : M＝3.0373, M : M＝3.4498), movement (S : M＝2.6716, M : M＝3.2392), interest in your surroundings (S : M＝3.0522, M : M＝3.2632). 3. Patients scoring high on the subjective physical status such as sleep, appetite, stomach condition bowel condition and urination states had higher scores in hospital stress than with patients scoring low on those subjective Physical status. The results suggest that subjective physical status might be on expression of hospital stress. Also patients with high scores in subjective physical statas might be predicted have a high level of stress on admission. And surgical patients had a higher level of hospital stress than medical patients.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
• /
• v.31 no.4
• /
• pp.289-296
• /
• 2005

This study aims to measure maximum holding times(MHTs) of symmetric and asymmetric whole body postures, and to compare three representative observational methods including OWAS, RULA, REBA, based on the MHTs. An experiment was conducted for obtaining the MHTs, in which hand position was used as experimental variable, and the MHT and subjective discomfort rating as dependent variables. The hand position was defined by the percentage of the shoulder height(%SH), the percentage of the arm reach(%AR) and rotation angle(R). The results showed that three independent variables of %SH, %AR and R significantly affected on the MHTs at ${\alpha}$=0.01, and that the MHTs were negatively linearly related to the discomfort scores of Borg CR10. It was also revealed that OWAS and REBA were less sensitive to postural stress than RULA. In addition, OWAS and REBA underestimated postural load of given postures compared to RULA. Therefore, it is recommended that among the three observational methods investigated in this study, RULA be used for a more precise evaluation of postural load.