• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.58-68
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• 2020

Purpose: Workers with chronic health problems find it difficult to maintain their work because of socioeconomic difficulties. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationships between physical, ergonomic, and mental health hazards in the workplace and chronic health problems of Korean workers. Methods: A total of 28,807 wage workers participated in the study and were selected using the Fifth Korean Working Conditions Survey (2017). Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to determine the associations between physical, ergonomic, and mental health hazards and chronic health problems. Results: Of the participants, 1,220 (4.23%) had chronic health problems. Even after adjusting the general characteristics, vibration, noise, high temperature, low temperature, dust, chemical and cigarette smoke, fatigue and painful posture, dragging or pushing or moving of heavy objects, repetitive hand or arm movements, working with a computer or smartphone, use of internet or e-mail, and anxiety situations increased the risk of chronic health problems. Conclusion: The study reaffirms that exposure of physical, ergonomic, and mental health hazards in the workplace significantly increases the risk of chronic health problems.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.185-193
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• 2015

There are so many definition of good work but generally job quality can be useful to analyze the good work. Good work may include some factors about health or working environment. This paper was planned to investigate the level of job quality in Korean employees. Especially comparison of health status between low an high job quality can be analyzed. Korean Working Conditions Survey was used. The various job characteristics were categorized into 6 component of job quality using factor analysis. Statistically mean difference test and cross-tabulation analysis were used to identify the difference of health status and distribution of the level of job quality. The result has shown the different distribution of the level of job quality by the economic sectors and occupations statistically significant. The positive cases of all of six components of job quality was 2.1% of Korean employees and the negative cases of all six components of job quality was 1.5%. The subjective general health status was correlated with job quality but work-related stress was negatively correlated with the level of job quality. This study was heuristic one, more depth analysis will be needed to identify the relationship and causation of job quality and health status.

• Journal of East-West Nursing Research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.91-101
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was performed to measure nurses' perception of job stress and job satisfaction, and to clarify the factors influential to their job satisfaction. Methods: Participants were 169 nurses working at a general hospital. Data were collected with self-administrated questionnaires and analyzed by SPSS/PC WIN 15.0. Results: Subjects perceived that job stress was higher than 'middle (3)', job satisfaction was lower than 'middle (3)', and job-related stress detrimental to job satisfaction. Influential factors for job satisfaction in a 2008 survey were duty-related stress, working conditions, and knowledge/skill-related stress. Duty-related stress and working conditions were cited as influential in a 2009 survey. The explained power for job satisfaction job was 32.5% in 2008 and 21.1% in 2009. Conclusions: Higher job-related stress detracts from job satisfaction. Hospital/nursing managers need to develop strategies that could improve the personal relationship between nurses and doctors, and provide administrative support to nurses. Provision of a financial personnel management plan could alleviate future nursing shortage triggered by job dissatisfaction.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.167-174
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• 2014

Objective: This research focuses on the working environment of office workers and aims to propose an ideal seating posture and chair design. Background: Generally, office workers having to seat in a fixed posture for long periods of time tend to suffer from an increased rate of musculoskeletal disorders. Method: The measurement and survey of 123 office workers on their working conditions and literature survey will lead to a suggestion of an ideal seating posture and workstation design theory. Results: Work environment satisfaction appeared low for chair and desks. Work-related pain over the last year was experienced among 47.2% of the respondents in shoulder (34.2%), neck (30.9%). Observation of working posture revealed that only 27.6% of workers utilize backrest during work. Conclusion: Office work embodies many situations where risks of musculoskeletal disorders may be high. Thus, the seated workplace must be set up to allow proper seating posture for workers. Application: The results of this study can be applied as baseline data for preventing musculoskeletal disorders of office workers.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.132-141
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between psychosocial working conditions and psychological well-being depending on the gender among Korean interactive service workers. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of the data extracted from the 2011 Korean Working Conditions Survey. For the present analysis, 15,669 workers who interact with others at work were selected. Based on the existing literature, a set of variables was chosen from the KWCS. Psychological well-being was measured using the WHO-5 well-being index. Results: The prevalence of poor psychological well-being was significantly higher among men (43.1%) than women (39.6%). Women were more likely to be exposed to demands for hiding emotions, bullying, and discrimination, whereas men were more likely to be exposed to psychological job demands, cognitive demands, demands for responsibility, role conflict and long working hours. Most factors were associated with poor well-being among women and men except demands for hiding emotions, skill discretion and development, physical violence, and sexual harassment. Conclusion: Based on these results, some practical suggestions are offered to help interactive service workers adjust to their duties.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.149-165
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was done to identify the causes of turnover in nursing staff in small and medium‐size hospitals and prepare measures to decrease turnover. Nurses in these hospitals were surveyed focusing on their nursing activities, reasons for turnover, and content of their work. Method: A mail survey of hospitals with 300 beds or less was conducted using a questionnaire including items on the current state of nursing, performance of nursing tasks, turnover of nurses, working conditions, and supports and policies related to insufficient number of nurses. Results: The average number of nurses per 100 beds was 37.5, 3.3 less than the prescribed level of 40.8. The turnover rate was higher when the level of remuneration for nursing care was low, and the most frequent reason for nurses leaving was 'move to another hospital', showing that there is a continuous chain of moves for nurses. Other frequent reasons were situations related to working conditions such as childbirth, child care, irregular working hours, night work, and low wages. Conclusion: To guarantee adequate nursing coverage in these hospitals, working conditions for nurses should be improved, including higher wages, a more flexible work system, and installation and operation of 24-hour child care facilities.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.64-74
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• 2016

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether chemical exposure among workers has relevance to dyspnea using data from the $3^{rd}$ Korea Working Conditions Survey. Methods: The research subjects were 29,711 wage workers. Chemical exposures consist of four factors, (1) breathing in vapors, fumes, dust and dirt, (2) breathing in organic solvent vapors, (3) handling or touching chemicals, and (4) secondhand smoke. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to examine the association between chemical exposure and dyspnea in the last 12months using proc surveylogistic in SAS 9.3 statistical software excluding people who had received a diagnosis of hypertension or obesity that can affect the respiratory distress symptoms(n=27,842). Results: Chemical exposure among workers was associated with dyspnea after adjustment for demographics and job characteristics. Prevalence of dyspnea was 4.9 per 1,000 among men and 5.8 per 1,000. Compared to a total score of 0 points of chemical exposure among workers, a total score of 1, 2-3, and 4 points tended to have increased risk of dyspnea in a dose-response manner for both men (OR=1.43, 1.93, and 4.26; P-for trend=0.002) and women(OR=1.10, 2.81, and 7.70; P-for trend=0.002). Stratified analysis by duration of current job showed that the association between chemical exposure and dyspnea tended to get stronger until 15 years and then disappeared afterwards, which reflects healthy worker survivor effect. Conclusions: We observed significant association between chemical exposure and dyspnea using the data of the $3^{rd}$ Korea Working Conditions Survey. Our results warrants providing knowledge related to chemical exposure, performing prevention activities, and creating various health policies to protect workers.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.308-322
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• 2002

The main objective of this paper is to examine the working conditions of physical therapists and to investigate the level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment under different working conditions. A survey was conducted through structured questionnaire for the physical therapists working in Busan area, and data from 175 therapists were utilized in the final analysis. Survey items included general characteristics of the therapists(sex, age, education, marital status, religion, income, career years, etc.), their working conditions(kinds of organizations they work in, location of PT room, weekly working hours, average number of patients, number of co-workers, equipments/facilities, etc.), and organizational effectiveness measured in terms of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Major results are as follows: 1) As for the general characteristics of the surveyed physical therapists, male(51.4$\%$) slightly exceeded female(48.6$\%$) and majority(more than 90$\%$) was 20-39 in age. Also, there were more single(57.7$\%$) than married(42.3$\%$), and 54.9$\%$ of the respondents had religion while 45.1$\%$ did not. In terms of the ranks in their organizations, only a few of them(6.9$\%$) were managers, and monthly salary mostly ranged from $\￦$1,000,000 to $\￦$2,500,000. More than half of them worked in various kinds of hospitals, with the remaining in health centers or social welfare institutions. 2) In regard to the working conditions of the respondents, 19.4$\%$ of PT rooms were located in basement areas while the remaining 80.6$\%$ in first to third floors. 34.3$\%$ of them treated 15 patients or less per day, whereas 25.1$\%$ treated 31 patients or more. Also, 52$\%$ recorded physical therapy charts periodically. As for the equipments and facilities, 25.1$\%$ felt 'sufficient' and 40$\%$'insufficient.' 3) The respondents provided various kinds of suggestions for the improvement of their working conditions, where the most important were 'salary raise' and 'reduction of working hours.' In addition, their requests to the PT Association included 'permission of opening of independent practice,' 'permission of legal specialty,' and 'vitalization of the Association.' 4) The comparative analysis of job satisfaction and organizational commitment among different characteristics of the respondents revealed that there was no significant difference between male and female, but in terms of age, the group of 40 or older was highest in both aspects. Besides, therapists who had 15 or more years of hospital career reported higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment than the others. It was also found that the level of organizational commitment increased as the rank of the respondents got higher. There were no significant differences in terms of marital status and religion. 5) Comparison with regard to working conditions showed that therapists employed in university hospitals, health centers and social welfare institutions felt higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment than those in community hospitals and clinics. Also, respondents who worked in basement areas had significantly lower job satisfaction than otherwise. The length of weekly working hours did not really affect the level of job satisfaction, but it was important to maintain 'regular working hours' for the hospitals to improve the employees' organizational commitment. As for the number of patients per day, 'medium level' (21-25 patients) had highest scores in both aspects. And, finally, sufficiency of equipments and facilities was found to be important for the improvement of organizational commitment.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.441-448
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• 2013

In recent years, the number of female workers pursuing careers in the construction engineering and management field has increased, despite the fact that the job positions have been traditionally considered as retaining job functions and/or qualities that are more appropriate to male than female. This may be attributed to the fact that the positions also require delicate and/or detail-oriented job functions, which can be successfully performed by female. It is important for project participants to understand the working conditions for female field managers by analyzing their job performance. This study collects expert opinions regarding female's managerial performance on job site. Survey questionnaires were administered to two focus groups, male and female field managers who work for general contractors. This study contributes to encouraging female's social and economic involvement by investigating the challenges they face in the workplace, and provides measures to respond to such challenges.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.329-338
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was conducted to investigate the relationship among working conditions, health status and well-being of door to door deliverers as well as to identify the factors influencing well-being. Study participants of 248 door to door deliverers were collected from the 2014 Korean Working Conditions Survey. Data were analyzed using the SPSS 24.0 statistical program. As a results, the factors influencing well-being of door to door deliverers were musculoskeletal work-related risk, working condition satisfaction, work life balance, and subjective health status and these variables explained 23.9% of well-being. Based on these findings, programs that develop working condition and health status are necessary for door to door deliverers to well-being.