• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
• /
• v.38 no.5
• /
• pp.739-747
• /
• 2008

Purpose: This study aimed to uncover the fundamental nature of living alone in female elderly. Methods: The phenomenological research approach developed by van Manen was adopted. Results: The theme was 'taking a firm stand alone on the edges of life'. The composition elements of living alone experienced by elderly women were as follows: 1) Corporeality: participants perceived their bodies by their health status. Unhealthy participants were suffering with diseases and dependant on other persons, while healthy participants were free from family responsibility and kept on moving. 2) Spatiality: participants felt both freedom and loneliness while they stayed home. 3) Relationality: participants felt pity and yearning for their bereaved husband and sometimes talked to his picture. According to their children's filial piety, participants were pleased or displeased. However, they incessantly devoted themselves to their children. 4) Temporality: participants considered the rest of their life as extra-time which was proceeding to death, and tried to keep themselves busy before they died. Conclusion: A nurse should understand the multifarious aspects of elderly women's life, and then intervene to consolidate their strengths for self-supporting the final years of life.

• Women's Health Nursing
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.128-140
• /
• 2021

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a self-transcendence enhancement program and examine its effect on self-transcendence, spiritual well-being, and psychological well-being in elderly women who live alone. Methods: A self-transcendence enhancement program was developed through theory, literature review, and in-depth interviews. The theoretical framework came from the Psychoeducational Approach to Transcendence and Health intervention model based on Reed's middle-range theory of self-transcendence. The program consisted of multiple modalities in a structured, theory-based program lasting for eight weekly sessions. Using a single-group pretest-posttest design, the program was tested on a group of 40 elderly women aged 75 to 84 years living alone in Daejeon, Korea. Participants completed self-reported study questionnaires before and after the program at the elderly welfare center. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24.0, with significance level set at .05. Paired t-test was used to compare mean differences before and after the program. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 79.1 years. After completing the program, the participants showed higher levels of self-transcendence (t=8.78, p<.001), overall spiritual well-being (t=8.30, p=.002), religious spiritual well-being (t=1.79, p=.040), existential spiritual well-being (t=6.75, p=.002), and positive affect (t=3.77, p=.001) than they did before the program. They also reported lower levels of depression (t=-7.59, p<.001) and negative affect (t=-6.15, p<.001). Conclusion: The self-transcendence enhancement program developed in this study may be effective for improving the level of self-transcendence in elderly women living alone and helping them to attain spiritual and psychological well-being.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.111-118
• /
• 2018

This study is a qualitative analysis that conducted a focus group interview to analyze the experiences of daily life of the elderly living alone and their chronic diseases management, and to explore the meaning, nature, and difficulties associated with. The subjects of this study were elder who lives alone without cognitive impairment and over 65-year-old. There were total 31 people and divided into 5 groups and they had 60 minutes interview. By this study, there were four themes of 'difficulties of daily life', 'suffering from chronic diseases', 'fear of the future', 'acceptance of life'. In conclusion, the elderly living alone felt difficulty in daily life due to physical aging and chronic illnesses, and they felt that they were accepting life at the same time while feeling the fear of the future situation. Therefore, in order to improve the life satisfaction and life quality of elderly people living alone, it is necessary to provide institutional devices that enable daily life such as meals and laundry to be maintained and to develop of an intervention program in order to maintain physical health. In addition, an intervention program should be developed to reduce the fear of future uncertainty and positively accommodate the life.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.85-91
• /
• 2018

This is a qualitative research that was carried out to analyze the experience of loneliness of the elderly people living alone using the result of focus group interviews. This study conducted interviews with 28 subjects in the Senior Welfare Center of D city. For the purpose, 28 persons were divided into 5 groups, and interviews were carried out with each group for 50-70 minutes. and the voluntary character of research participation was sufficiently explained. As a result of the research, three topic collections consisting of 'Unavoidable lonesomeness', 'Inevitable death', and 'Acceptance of my life' and seven subjects, which consist of 'Absence of spouse', 'Independence for children', 'Death of neighbor (friend)', 'Fear of death left alone', 'Laying down', 'Taking care of my health', and 'Soothing loneliness in my own way', were derived. The elderly persons living alone who participated in this research expressed their feeling of unavoidable loneliness and their effort to overcome the loneliness. Based on the findings of this research, it is hoped that diverse plans to overcome psychological loneliness of the elderly people living alone will be developed.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.6 no.4
• /
• pp.149-155
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study is to find out the connection between the safety awareness of elder who lives alone and the residential environment, and to find and derive improvement measures to enhance safety awareness through the frequency and type of accidents of the elderly living alone between them. This study surveyed a total of 67 senior citizens living alone in Sujeong-gu, Seongnam-si with the help of 22 life-care workers. A survey was completed using a safety awareness diagnostic tool. As a result of analyzing the accident experiences of the elderly living alone according to the residential environment, there were significant differences in the type of accident and the location of the accident. In addition, through a survey on the safety consciousness of the elderly living alone, we newly found out that there is a significant relationship between the time out and safety consciousness.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.172-178
• /
• 2018

Objectives : This study aimed to describe the use of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and to identify predictors for their use in the elderly living alone. Methods : This is a cross-sectional study that enrolled 1,099 subjects. Data regarding socio-demographic status, medical condition, cognition, mood disorder and use of OTC drugs were collected using self-administered questionnaire and from a specific semi-structured interview by a trained nurse. Data regarding use of OTC drugs were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Logistic regression analysis was applied to examine factors associated with the use of OTC drugs. Results : The use of OTC drugs were reported by 35.4% of the subjects. Analgesics (13.6%) was the most frequent drugs. Depression (OR=1.10, 95% CI=1.10-1.87) and comorbidities measured by cumulative illness rating scale (CIRS) (OR=1.08, 95% CI=1.03-1.12) were significantly associated with the use of OTC drugs in the elderly living alone. Conclusions : Depression and severity of underlying medical conditions could be a predictor of the use of OTC drugs in the elderly living alone. The clinicians should be vigilant regarding the potential use of nonprescription medications in the elderly.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
• /
• v.20 no.10
• /
• pp.79-86
• /
• 2022

The purpose of this study was to identify suicidal ideation and related factors of elderly people with diabetes mellitus living alone in rural area. A descriptive study design was used. The participants were 466 elderly people, aged 65 years and over, and diagnosed with diabetes mellitus living at O province in South Korea. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, χ²-test, and logistic regression analysis with SPSS statistics 26.0 program. The results of the analysis showed that the suicidal ideation rate of the subjects was 27.3%, and the subjects showed significant differences in suicidal ideation as Cognitive function was lower (t=-4.23, p<.001), Depression(t=9.56, p<.001) and Loneliness (t=4.88, p<.001) were higher. Related Factors of suicidal ideation were Cognitive function (OR=0.86, p<.001), Depression (OR=1.18, p<.001) and Loneliness (OR=1.17, p=.001). These variables explained 32.2% of suicidal ideation. Therefore, in order to reduce suicide ideation of the elderly with diabetes mellitus living alone in rural areas, intervention that can improve Cognitive function, Depression, and Loneliness is needed.

• 한국노년학
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.241-260
• /
• 2010

This study aims to fully understand the experience of elderly men living alone in a single room occupancy(Chokbang) by identifying the meaning and essence of their experiences. This research used purposive sampling. The data were collected for 7 months from september 2008 to march 2009. Eight elderly men participated in the interview. Mainly the semi-structured in-depth interview and focus group interview were used. The data analysis was based on Giorgi's 4 types of specific steps. As a result, 4 components and 16 subordinate components were drawn from the analysis. The components resulted from the analysis are: , , , . Based on these results, I discussed the attitudes of the elderly men living alone in Chokbang in meaningful and gender-sensitive ways. Moreover, I provided social welfare connotation and future research suggestions.

• Journal of IKEEE
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.39-46
• /
• 2009

Wireless sensor networks consist of small, autonomous devices with wireless networking capabilities. In order to further increase the applicability in real world applications, minimizing energy consumption is one of the most critical issues. Therefore, accurate energy model is required for the evaluation of wireless sensor networks. In this paper we analyze the power consumption for wireless sensor networks. To develop the power consumption model, we have measured the power characteristics of commercial Kmote node based on TelosB platforms running TinyOS. Based on our model, the estimated lifetime of a battery powered sensor node can use about 6.9 months for application of human detection using PIR sensors. This result indicates that sensor nodes can be used in a monitoring system for elderly living alone.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.3-12
• /
• 2000

The nutritional and health status of low-income alone-living elderly(ALE) was assessed in relation to the activity of daily living (ADL) and nutritional risk factors. One hundred and eighty five ALE over 65 years old, living in the Sungnam area, were interviewed in their homes through questionnaires. The results were as follows : 63.6% of the subjects considered themselves in poor the health and only 4.3% of them considered thermselves healthy. 89.7% of the subjects answered that they were suffering from illness and 29.7% were taking medication. The ADL was assessed through 10 checklist items and the average score of the ADL was $84.78{\pm}11.11$(maximum :100) The nutritional risk index(NRI) was evaluated by 12 risk factors and the average score of the NRI was $4.43{\pm}1.38$ (maximumː12) The scores of the ADL were positively correlated with the scored of the instrumental activities of daily living (IADL)(r=0.7523, p<0.001) and negatively correlated with NRI(r= -0.2694, p<0.001) When subjects were divided into nutritionally high risk group(HNARI: TEX>$NRI{\geq}5$) and nutritionally low risk group(LNRI : NRI<5) according to the USA screening basis, 48.9% of the subjects belonged to the HNRI, But 16.9% of the HNRI and 34.4% of the LNRI belonged to the fourth quartile($Q_{0.75}$) of the ADL, the distribution of which showed significant differences(p<0.05) We suggest that the application of the ADL as a screening tool for nutrition intervention programs for the elderly. Oncemore, further research is needed to develop appropriate checklist items for the ADL and NRI along with the screening basis for the NRI 새 diagnose the adverse nutritional status of the Korean elderly.