• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.376-386
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• 2001

I. Background The problem of discharging patients from hospital have been well documented in the literature over the last 20 years. They included poor communication between hospital and community, inadequate notice of discharge, over-reliance on informal support and lack of statutory support, inattention to patients needs before leaving hospital, and wasted or duplicated visits by community nurses. Most patients discharged from hospital are able to return home with little or no support, while others will require a 'package of care' to support them back to good health. Patient with complex care needs, including the frail elderly and those with mental health problems, may require continuing care in special housing, residential, or nursing homes. With this population,effective discharge arrangement is needed and the study on this problem is urgent in Korea because the Medical Reform Project is on suspension of success. II. Results of the Study: 1. Discharge service needs assessed on 360 elderly patients who were hospitalized during the survey period at four university hospitals. Patients want to know the information on disease management after discharge. Follow-up telephone service is the most frequently checked service. 2. Multidisciplinary Discharge Planning is recommended at the hospital level to reduce the readmission and decrease the length of stay. 3. Further research is needed to validate and test the assumption of the solution which is developed in this research.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.19-26
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• 2014

The number of elderly who wants to access to Nursing Homes (NH) will increase due to the rapid aging society and domestic changes. Those who move into NH expect 24/7 care service in safe environment. Providing space free from danger, especially from fall, for the frail elderly is essential. The purpose of this study is to categorize performance needs of flooring materials in the aspect of safety, and analyze materials so that adequate ones for each space in NH can be suggested. Performance needs are as follows; slip resistance (dry/wet), fire resistance, resilience, water resistance, soil retardant, anti-bacterial, gloss, sound absorbtion. maintenance, durability, ease replacement, color and pattern variety, visual and tactual texture, tactile warmth, IAQ, sustainable material (before use), impact to nature (after use). They are categorized under function, economy, sensibility and sustainability. It was found that there are better materials than common ones that has been used repeatedly in NHs, such as vinyl sheets and VCT. In overall, Cork flooring and nylon carpet met all four categories, followed by wool carpet, rubber and linoleum. For bedroom, wood flooring, Cork, rubber, wool carpet, nylon carpets were suggested. In bathroom with shower, rubber, vinyl sheet and porcelain tiles were safe materials. As living/dining room and corridor floors, wool carpet, nylon carpet, cork flooring would be excellent as they are resilient and durable. The result of this paper can be used by both NH managers and material companies, resulting better quality of life of the elderly by providing safe environment.

• Journal of Korean Medical Science
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• v.33 no.51
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• pp.332.1-332.8
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• 2018

Background: The trend of aging society is occurring globally, and with it, one of the health problems that is emerging is frailty. Efforts are being made to account for the increasing prevalence of frailty, and various modifiable factors are being considered in regards to frailty. Because social contact has shown beneficial effects in terms of health in previous studies, it is increasingly being considered in relation to frailty. The purpose of this study was to assess the association of different types of social contact with frailty status. Methods: A total of 1,200 Korean elders aged 70-84 years old were included in the study. Using Fried's Cardiovascular Health Study index to categorize the frailty status, the relationship between frailty status and frequency of contact (i.e., with family members, friends, or neighbors) was analyzed using multinomial logistic regression accounting for confounders. Results: Adjusting for all covariates, frequency of contact with friends was the most statistically significant. Less frequent contact was associated with a significantly higher odds of pre-frailty: monthly (odds ratio [OR], 2.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.27-3.20), and rarely (OR, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.17-2.99), with daily contact group as reference. Also, those contacting friends monthly (OR, 5.04; 95% CI, 2.29-11.08) or rarely (OR, 3.23; 95% CI, 1.58-6.61) were more likely to be frail compared to the daily group. Conclusion: Frequency of social contact, especially with friends, is strongly associated with frailty.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.94-106
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• 2022

This study was attempted to investigate relationship between level of frailty and sleep duration in the Korean older adults using data from the 8th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey(KNHANES VIII-1, 2019). The subjects were 1,690, complex sample frequency, descriptive statistics, cross and logistic regression analysis were performed using SPSS program. As a main result, sleep duration simultaneously adjusted for general, health behavior and disease characteristics did not show significant relationship between frail level, but 'not recommended' sleep duration is significantly decreased 70~74 years old, significantly increased lower level of education, lower level of income, and a lot of perceived stress. Finally, personal and social efforts are required to prevent frailty, improve sleep duration of older adults.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.103-120
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• 1999

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics and caregiving behavior in families who awarded on filial piety. Using the qualitative method 137 families and social supports to them were analyzed,. The major findings can be summarized as follows (1) Most of caregivers were daughter-in -law over 40 years in 3-generation or 2-generation family. Elderly can be characterized as oldest-old dependent long-term care for more than 10 years. (2) These families showed very high family solidarity with strong collectivity. (3) Their economic emotional and service cares were family-centered with helps from their extended family. These families were supported emotional helps rather than instrumental helps from social network. It was concluded that to help family elder care social support program for the frail elder caregiving families should be complemented in their children support program family life enrichment program for the inter-generational relationship medical care program other social network program and religion program etc. And more concrete and qualified study for the adaptation of filial piety families should be followed.

• Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.192-200
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• 2023

Objective: This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a balance training program in improving balance and functional independence to reduce fall risks among community-dwelling elders. Design: A multi-center randomized controlled trial Methods: A total of 66participants were randomly assigned to a balance training group or a control group. The balance training program, conducted three times a week for 32 weeks, included warm-up exercises, main balance training exercises, and cooldown stretch exercises. Outcome measures included the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT), and Modified Barthel Index (MBI). Results: The balance training group demonstrated significant improvements in all outcome measures, indicating enhanced balance, improved functional mobility, and increased independence in activities of daily living. In contrast, the control group showed only slight improvements in BBS, TUGT and MBI scores. Conclusions: These findings provide evidence supporting the effectiveness of balance training programs in reducing fall risk and promoting health and wellbeing among community-dwelling elders. Future research should aim to refine the design of these programs and assess the sustainability of the observed improvements.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.313-323
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• 2017

This study is a descriptive study that investigates the factors that affect the frailty of the elderly in the late period. The data were collected using a questionnaire during the period from 1 to 31 of December 2013. The subjects were 301 elderly people aged 70 years living in M city. The data were analyzed using a $x^2$ test, t-test, and ANOVA with the SPSS Statistics 18.0 program. Hierarchical regression analysis was performed to examine the factors that affect the weakness of elderly people. The results showed that 15.3% of the elderly living at home were frail. The factors that affect the frailty of the elderly were sex (p<0.01), nutritional status (p<0.01), cognition function (p<0.01), ADL (p<0.01), IADL (p<0.05), visual acuity (p<0.05), and chewing discomfort (p<0.05). A higher the degree of frailty was associated with women, poorer nutritional status, higher impairments to perform the daily activities (ADL and IADL), poorer hearing, and more feeling of chewing discomfort. These results can explain the frailty of elderly people over 70 years of age in a local community and the variables of health. The results suggest that the development of a comprehensive program for the elderly with weak physical, emotional, and functional health should be given priority.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.25 no.1 s.85
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• pp.127-144
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• 2007

This study was conducted for the purpose of analyzing volunteer workers' perceptions of and attitudes toward the behavior problems of the elderly residents after caring for the residents voluntarily at low-income nursing homes. Eleven male and female volunteers ranging from age 19 to 52 were asked how they felt about the elderly residents' behavior problems and what kind of behavioral problems they had experienced after doing volunteer works in the three chosen facilities. In particular, they were expected to explain what emotional changes they experienced during their volunteer service. In this study, it was observed that most of the elderly subjects experienced three categories of behavior problems: habitual, repetitious and unreasonable activities caused by the elderly residents' life span backgrounds, unexpected and/or abrupt behaviors resulting from gradual cognitive impairments, and physiological, awkward activities caused from gradual senility. The volunteers tend to believe that the elderly residents are naturally expected to act positively, since they have been provided with well- planned, regular care services such as bathing, counseling, activity programs, and religious guidances. On the other hand, some respondents stated that their experiences at the nursing homes caused them to form negative images of the elderly; they feel that the elderly are not helpful for giving advices on critical decisions, guiding and encouraging their daily lives, and offering any positive influences toward their own lives. Rather, they find themselves getting too much stressed as a result of their intimate contacts with demented or senile residents. Overall, in this study, it is proposed that education for confronting sudden abrupt behavior problems should be intensified more for female volunteers, since they tend to be more susceptible to emotional harassment resulting from the problem behaviors. It is also proposed that young volunteers who have not been systematically trained for confronting aggressive behaviors need to be separately assigned their roles in order to minimize the potential of confronting unseemly situations resulting from male residents whose mental health has deteriorated. Furthermore, it is also suggested that the combination of leisure-related activities for healthy residents and stressful intimate services for the frail residents be systematically planned and implanted for the volunteer program so that the volunteers can lessen the chances of suddenly finding themselves confronted with extremely abrupt agitations.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.1-23
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• 2016

This study analyzes the effects of caring for grandchildren on Korean grandparents' health, using the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging from 2006 to 2012. We investigate how caregiving is provided and analyze the effects of caregiving on grandparents' physical health, mental health, and health-related behaviors. As elderly people's health is generally frail, it is unclear whether the provision of childcare affects their health negatively. We control for the endogeneity of caregiving by an individual fixed effect (FE) model and instrumental variable-fixed effect (FE-IV) models. Using these models, we determine the endogeneity of caregiving and show that the significant effects of caregiving on health disappear as we control for endogeneity in the FE and FE-IV models. Even after controlling for endogeneity, we find that caregiving increases the probability of feeling pain as well as the number of different types of pain. Furthermore, caregiving increases the probability of restrictions on daily activities because of pain. On the other hand, caregiving reduces the symptoms of depression. In relation to health-related behaviors, caregiving reduces the probability of physical exercise and regular meals. Our results imply that although caregiving has a positive effect on mental health, the increase in physical pain and in non-healthy behaviors may lead to a deterioration of the caregiver's long-term health, which in turn may increase the medical costs of the elderly. Potential policy alternatives are discussed in the paper.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.99-106
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• 2004

This study attempts to provide the fundamental materials for space program in terms of planning a senior welfare center by means of examining and analyzing the present conditions of spatial arrangement of each section in senior welfare center for the aged. The results of the study are as in the following. 1) The demand for new service programs corresponding to the improved quality of the elderly and various social desires is relatively on the increase. Each program in senior welfare center for the elderly should be connected in an organic manner and the organization of space should be provided. 2) The section of counseling, the first step when using a welfare center, should be located in the entrance of the building and it has to be closely connected with other section. 3) The section of medical rehabilitation is a place mostly for the elderly in their frail physical condition; therefore, it is effective to use horizontal line. 4) It is important for the room for volunteers in the section for domiciliary welfare to be arranged flexibly with the office or the room for social education, and it is necessary to consider how easy daytime or short-term care is accessible. 5) The space where dynamic programs are progressed in the section of social education should be distinguished from the section of medical rehabilitation or the room for daytime care and the room for short-term care of the section of domiciliary welfare.