• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2022

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the mediating effect of Psychological stress of COVID-19 stress on the relationship between nursing work environment and turnover intention of nurses in long-term care hospitals. Methods: The participants were 176 nurses working at three long-term care hospitals in Changwon City. Data were collected from August 11 to 14, 2021, using self-report questionnaires. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and hierarchical regression, using the SPSS 23.0 software. A mediation analysis was performed according to the Baron and Kenny's test, and Sobel test. Results: Turnover intention was positively correlated with Psychological stress of COVID-19 stress (r=.23, p=.002) and negatively correlated with nursing work environment (r=-.44, p<.001). Psychological stress of COVID-19 stress had a significantly negative relationship with nursing work environment (r=-.15, p=.045). Psychological stress of COVID-19 stress partially mediated the relationship between nursing work environment and turnover intention. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that a positive nursing work environment can help nurses reduce their Psychological stress of COVID-19 stress and turnover intention. To reduce the turnover intention among nurses' in long-term care, it is necessary to promote better work environments suitable for COVID-19 and to establish detailed strategies for reducing their physiological stress.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.689-702
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to develop a situation-specific theory to explain nurses' experiences of the COVID-19 crisis. Methods: The participants were 16 hospital nurses who experienced the COVID-19 crisis. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews from September 2, 2020 to January 20, 2021. Transcribed interview contents were analyzed using Corbin and Strauss's grounded theory method. Results: A total of 38 concepts and 13 categories were identified through an open coding process. The core category found was becoming a pioneering nurse who turns crises into opportunities. The causal conditions were the chaos of being exposed defenselessly to an unexpected pandemic, fear caused by a nursing care field reminiscent of a battlefield, and moral distress from failing to protect patients' human dignity. The contextual conditions were feeling like the scapegoat of the hospital organization, increasing uncertainty due to the unpredictable state of COVID-19, and relative deprivation due to inappropriate treatment. The central phenomenon was suffering alone while experiencing the dedication of the COVID-19 hero image. The action/interactional strategy were efforts to find a breakthrough and getting the nurse's mind right, and the intervening conditions were gratitude for those who care for broken hearts and getting used to myself with repetitive work. The Consequences were becoming an independent nurse and frustration with the unchanging reality. Conclusion: This study provides the foundation for the nurse's situation-specific theory of the COVID-19 crisis by defining the crisis perceived by nurses who cared for COVID-19 patients and suggesting types of coping with the crisis.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.39-48
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• 2022

Purpose: COVID-19 has negatively influenced the financial performance of restaurant firms. Previous literature suggests that the franchising strategy effectively helps restaurant firms recover from difficult business conditions through various methods for expanding business size and enhancing business efficiency. According to risk-sharing theory, restaurant franchisors may minimize operational risks by sharing the risks with their franchisees. For instance, restaurant franchisors could generate more stable cash flow using franchise fees from their franchisees. However, research on the effect of franchise's risk reduction factor on business performance during pandemic is scarce. Thus, this study aims to examine the positive moderating effect of franchising between COVID-19 and restaurants' financial performance. Research design, data, and methodology: Panel data including financial information and franchising status of restaurant firms were collected for analysis. In order to control for unobserved firm-specific factors, generalized least squared estimation in fixed effects model was conducted. Huber-White robust standard errors were used to deal with heteroscedasticity issues. Results: It was found that COVID-19 pandemic has a negative effect on the restaurants' financial performance such as ROA (return on assets), ROE (return on equity), and PM (profit margins), which confirms the findings from existing literature. More importantly, results show that the degree of franchising has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between COVID-19 and financial performance of restaurant firms. This suggests that more active engagement in franchising may decrease negative impacts of COVID-19 on the restaurants' financial performance. Conclusions: The study supports existing literature related to risk-sharing theory, by confirming that pandemics, such as COVID-19, negatively affect financial performance of the restaurants. Furthermore, it was found that franchising strategy can help lessen negative impacts of pandemics on the firm performance. These findings can contribute to the franchise and restaurant management literature by suggesting the role of franchising in reducing business risks, thereby positively affecting financial performance. Moreover, this study offers business managers of franchisors and franchisees insights for utilizing franchising in restaurant risk management. Policymakers may also gain information on aiding restaurant firms during global crisis, such as COVID-19.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.778-785
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• 2021

Purpose: The study is to analyze the current status of international clinical trial information services related to COVID-19 and to find out the impact of disclosing activities of clinical trial registration on the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Method: To achieve the purpose of the study, this study analyzed the current status of 780 registered clinical trials for COVID-19 during March of 2020 by using regression analysis. Result: The analysis of clinical trial research registration information showed and proved its usefulness for the development of related new drugs, treatments, vaccines, predictive and prognostic diagnostic kits and treatments related to the COVID-19 (Corona 19) in the world. Conclusion: The study concludes and urges all medical and pharmaceutical companies to register their trials on CRIS and recommends utilizing this registered data to develop advanced drug to benefits all patients related to COVID-19.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.180-190
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• 2022

Background: Like direct infection from COVID-19, psychological concern about infection could affect health. Concern about COVID-19 infection was associated with individual habits to practice rules for preventing infection. Therefore, this study aimed to check occupational types and whether to practice tooth brushing after lunch depending on the occupation of economic workers and find correlations between concerns about infection due to COVID-19 pandemic and tooth brushing after lunch. Methods: The raw data was from the community health survey conducted in 2020. Among 229,269 adult participants aged 19 years and older, 138,970 economic workers were included in the final analysis. The chi-squared test was used to find differences in psychological concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the participants, the rate of practicing tooth brushing after lunch was based on COVID-19-related psychological concerns. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to check the influence of psychological concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic on the rate of practicing tooth brushing after lunch. Results: According to occupational classifications, professionals and office workers and career soldiers had 1.551- and 1.581-times higher practicing rates than managers, respectively, whereas machine operators, agricultural and fishery sector workers, and daily laborers had lower practicing rates. Regarding COVID-19-related psychological concerns, the group with a lower concern about infection had a 1.076 times higher practicing rate than that with greater concern. The group with greater concern about blame from neighbors had 1.119 times higher practicing rate than that with lower concern. Conclusion: The correlations between higher economic workers' concerns about infection and blame from neighbors and higher recognition of the necessity to prevent COVID-19 and practice tooth brushing after lunch were confirmed. It is necessary to prepare measures for practicing tooth brushing after lunch suitable to the characteristics of occupational types and work environments of economic workers.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.247-258
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• 2022

Purpose: Considering that nurses perform critical roles for caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to investigate core competencies in disaster nursing. This study aimed to identify influencing factors on core competencies in disaster nursing by examining relationships between attitudes toward disaster management, disaster preparedness, and core competencies in disaster nursing in university hospital nurses' experiences of caring for patients with COVID-19. Methods: The participants were nurses working in two university hospitals who had either experiences of caring for patients with COVID-19 or no experiences. A questionnaire was distributed to 198 participants between October and November 2021. Results: The findings of multiple regression analysis demonstrated that the factors related to core competencies in disaster nursing in the participants were disaster preparedness (β=.80, p<.001) and nurses' experiences of caring for patients with COVID-19 (β=.11, p=.007). Specifically, the factors related to core competencies in disaster nursing in those having experiences of direct caring for patients with COVID-19 were disaster preparedness (β=.84, p<.001) and marital status (β=.16, p=.001). The factors related to core competencies in disaster nursing in those with indirect caring for patients with COVID-19 were disaster preparedness (β=.75, p<.001) and an intention to participate in disaster response (β=.16, p=.037). Conclusion: Based on this study, it is important to develop disaster nursing education programs focusing on the full spectrum of disaster management including disaster preparedness, disaster response, and disaster recovery training.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2023

This study was conducted to explore the change in the market issues on HMR (Home Meal Replacements) using local foods after the COVID-19 outbreak. Online text data were collected from internet news, social media posts, and web documents before (from January 2016 to December 2019) and after (from January 2020 to November 2022) the COVID-19 outbreak. TF-IDF analysis showed that 'Trend', 'Market', 'Consumption', and 'Food service industry' were the major keywords before the COVID-19 outbreak, whereas 'Wanju-gun', 'Distribution', 'Development', and 'Meal-kit' were main keywords after the COVID-19 outbreak. The results of topic modeling analysis and categorization showed that after the COVID-19 outbreak, the 'Market' category included 'Non-face-to-face market' instead of 'Event,' and 'Delivery' instead of 'Distribution'. In the 'Product' category, 'Marketing' was included instead of 'Trend'. Additionally, in the 'Support' category, 'Start-up' and 'School food service' appeared as new topics after the COVID-19 outbreak. In conclusion, this study showed that meaningful change had occurred in market issues on HMR using local foods after the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, governments should take advantage of such market opportunity by implementing policy and programs to promote the development and marketing of HMR using local foods.

• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.44-54
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• 2023

Purpose: Uncertainty and restrictions on daily life have increased fear, stress, and depression during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Depression is the most common mental health problem in pregnant women. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the levels of fear and stress related to COVID-19 experienced by pregnant women, as well as their levels of depression, and to examine the factors associated with depression during pregnancy. Methods: This was a cross-sectional, correlational study conducted among 153 pregnant women who visited a maternity hospital in Busan, South Korea. A self-reported questionnaire was used for data collection from December 18, 2021 to March 8, 2022. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the independent t-test, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson correlation coefficients, and multiple regression. Results: Pregnant women experienced a moderate level of fear related to COVID-19, with an average score of 21.55±4.90. The average score for depression during pregnancy was 14.86±11.10, with 50.3% of the participants experiencing depression (≥13). The factors associated with depression during pregnancy were fear of COVID-19, contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19, being in the third trimester of pregnancy, high stress levels due to difficulties experienced from social distancing measures, and unintended pregnancy. These five statistically significant factors explained 35.0% of variance in depression during pregnancy. Conclusion: Considering the prevalence of depression in pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to develop interventions to reduce anxiety by providing correct information and alleviating the stress of social distancing.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2023

Background: The government should find ways to improve the effectiveness of the policies to control the incidence and mortality of the infectious disease. The purpose of this study is to find out whether the trust in the government's ability to respond to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affects the quarantine and hospitalization rate, incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19 and quarantine rules compliance in each region of Korea. Methods: The subject of this study is 250 regions (si·gun·gu) in Korea, and the 2020 Community Health Survey data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) was used for the trust in the government's ability to respond to COVID-19, quarantine and hospitalization rate and quarantine rules compliance. For the incidence and mortality of COVID-19 and community factors, data was obtained from KDCA and Korean Statistical Information Service. Path analysis was used to find out the degree of inter-variable influence, and community factors (socio-demographic factors, community health factors, and health behavior factors) were used as control variables. Results: The regional disparity in key variables showed that the late pandemic period cumulative incidence and mortality of COVID-19 were large, while the early pandemic period quarantine and hospitalization rate and quarantine rules compliance were small. Path analysis showed that when community factors were controlled, the trust in government was statistically significant in all of the late pandemic period cumulative incidence (p=0.024) and mortality (p=0.017), and quarantine rules compliance (p=0.011). Conclusion: This study revealed that the higher the trust in the government's ability to respond to COVID-19, the lower the COVID-19 mortality and the higher the quarantine rules compliance at the regional level in Korea. This suggests that when the government implements healthcare policies to control infectious diseases, it is necessary to consider trust to improve policy compliance and control the mortality of the disease and maintain high trust through several effective methods.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.1475-1487
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to understand the experience of nurses working in public health centers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify its essence. The subjects who had worked for more than one year during the period of COVID-19 pandemic in three county health centers in C province were selected as research participants and analyzed according to the phenomenological method proposed by Colaizzi. As a result of the study, three themes were derived: Negative feelings about COVID-19, A firm sense of professional calling, Leading the way in preparing a system to respond to new infectious diseases. Based on this, it was confirmed that it is necessary to strengthen psychological problem support for nurses, improve biased work, support professional manpower, support systematic education, and prepare appropriate compensation system. Therefore, based on the results of this study, active discussions should be made with various interests in order to establish a support system for nurses who are major personnel in the health care system and to prepare an effective infectious disease response strategy.