• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.28-40
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• 1998

Background : Many patients have been frequently complaining that they have to spend couples of hours in hospital on visiting outpatient clinic. Among several steps, two major time consuming steps were waiting to see a doctor and/or waiting at pharmacy to get medicine. Therefore not only to provide the proper guidance for medication or counseling on health affairs but also to make waiting time short is very important for the better hospital services. The aim of this study is to validate several time-saving processes to reduce waiting time at outpatient pharmacy and its efficacy. Methods : We surveyed the time interval actually taken to receive medicine after issuing prescription by doctors, and analyzed the data on the bases of relevant or possible causative factors. Then following processes were given to reduce waiting time and resurveyed and compared both data to validate efficacy of those processes : 1. No work-off on Monday and Tuesday 2. Work hour shift to start 30 minutes earlier 3. Changeable work shift between outpatient pharmacy and ward pharmacy according to work load 4. Use of pre-made medicines prescribed more frequently by certain doctors at certain time 5. Cooperation with doctors to use set prescriptions. Results : Before the process, mean waiting time at pharmacy was 29.2 minutes and most time consuming period was from noon to 1 PM, 3 to 4 PM, 1 to 2 PM in order of frequency. Only 37.7 % of patients could get the medicine within 20 minutes. Three times of surveys after process showed mean waiting time at pharmacy were 18.1 minutes, 19.0 minutes, and 17.6 minutes, respectively. And 72.7 %, 81.3%, and 82.2% of patients could get the medicine within 20 minutes. Conclusion : The mean waiting time was markedly reduced with above mentioned processes which applied intradepartmently event hough with little cooperation from other department. Consequently, the complaints of patients were decreased with increasing the satisfaction degree. In conclusion, those suggestions were recommanded to improve the degree of satisfaction of patients.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.36-53
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• 1987

It is utmostly important to establish the efficient fitable way of peoples' active participation in primary health care especially in the areas where the public or governmental service input for the basic health care is insufficient like as in rural areas of Korea. In light of above reason, this study focused mainly on the evaluation of roles and activities of village health workers (VHWs) who were selected from grass- root level of village people in order to derive further motivation for active participation. This is believed to be a sort of feedback mechanisms. Actually, the authors collected the activity reports of VHWs who had been devoting themselves in the primary health care services of Jeomdong Area, of Yeoju Gun one of Korea University Community Health Action Programmes and survey record on the VHWs activity from correspondent people. 1 hose data were analyzed through computer programmed package. The activities performed by VHWs were limited to the performance in 1985 for conveniance. The summarized results were as follows; 1) General characteristics of VHWs. Among a total of 28 VHWs in the area, about 39.3g of them have been replaced up to the date since the implementation in 1983, because of moving out, occupational employment and of others. The age of majority (75.0%) lied between the range of 30-50, and educational background of 67.9% belonged to category of primary school graduation, about 50% of them experienced to be or were also entiled "chief of women club" of corresponding villages. 2) Work-load of VHWs. Each VHW was assigned for tasks of health care for average 55 households of 248 persons. They shared approximately 6 days a month for the activity in average and it covered 17 cases of basic health care in a month. A half of the VHWs performed home visits irregularly without solidified schedule. 3) Work performance analysis. Informations collected through VHWs were compared with data from official vital registration at local administration center "Myon Office" in 1985. VHWs collected 100.8 of new born, 116.2 of death, 58.3 of move in and 74.8 of move out in comparison with 100.0 of official registration each. Pregnant women of 79.8% of mothers among the total pregnancy of 94 which were confirmed as normally delivered or aborted cases by all means afterwards had been detected by VHWs as being pregnant and all of them received some of antenatal cares by VHWs. All(100%) of delivered women were detected by VHWs through home visits and they were cared postnatally. Whereas, according to the records of birth registration, the places of delivery were clinic in 33.7%, and mother's home in 66.3%, VHWs reported them to be clinic in 48.9%, midwifery in 20.2%. It was cleared that most of misinformation was caused by uncautious filling of birth registration at notification. Among the total of 717 eligible women under age 44 years, family planning status of 92.6% was reported by VHWs confirming practice of control to be 70.8% of reported fertile women. 4) Attitude of VHW on the roles and functions. Although 92.0% of VHWs expressed VHWs to be worthwhile, only 52.0% of them had dignity and satisfaction in their activity and 44.0% of them had passive attitude of working saying they followed direction regardlessly. Concerning difficulties in performance as a VHW, 60.7% of them pointed out lacking of medical and health related knowledge by themselves. Still, 64.0% of them thought visiting unfamilier house to be awful and 40.0% complained forms of activity to be difficult and hard. It was also revealed that 56.6% confessed lack of interest on community health service itself. Most of VHWs needed more educational training especially on clinical fields such as cares of gynecological diseases, hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic diseaes of the aged. Regular on-the-job basic trainings were said to be needed twice a year.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.106-112
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in the direct medical expenditure of community residents according to their physical activity level. The quota sampling method was used to select samples from a youth community center, senior center, community cultural center, and community recreational sports center in G city in Gyeongbuk-do. Of the 773 questionnaires distributed, 716 were completed. The questionnaires consisted of the demographic characteristics, regular exercise and physical activity levels, health status and medical costs. While the beneficial effect of regular exercise and physical activity on dental costs was not (significant), its effect on the costs of visiting hospital services was (significant). The mean differences in the total monthly direct medical expenditures on outpatient services and medicine for those with very high, high, moderate, low, and very low levels of physical activity were 7,500, 26,299, 47,517, 9,314, and 9,9978 won, respectively. The result of this study supported the findings of previous studies that regular exercise and physical activity. are not associated with the reduction of medical expenditure.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.419-431
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• 2007

The setting of dental hygiene clinics is very important to dental hygiene education, which is the place not only to educate students but also to care clients. The purpose of this study is to provide basic research material for improvement of dental hygiene care system in dental hygiene clinics by analyzing the client satisfaction. A questionnaire survey by means of self-entry method was conducted to find out satisfaction of the client, who was visited to the dental hygiene clinics in the department of dental hygiene, Yonsei University. An analysis of frequency, one way ANOVA and T-Test were performed through SPSS 12.0K program. 1. Most clients were mainly composed of students in Wonju College of Medicine. 2. The clients visited for scaling(85.8%) and oral examination(9.73%) were much than treatment(4.42%). 3. Clients aged 21 to 25 were relatively lower in satisfaction with the facilities, system, attitude than any other ages. 4. The dental hygiene students are the lowest group in satisfaction with the facility, system, attitude than medical and nursing students. 5. The clients satisfaction with dental hygiene clinics was decreased in reverse proportion to visiting frequency. 6. Most of the clients pointed out the problems of appointment system(54.0%) and fee(23.0%), which should be improved than any other operation conditions. 7. Most of the clients were not satisfied with chair time and pain during care. 8. Most clients recognized to receive the better care service than other dental offices(81.3%). Especially, they paid attention to oral health education using phase-contrast microscope. 9. Many clients were dissatisfied with facilities of the dental hygiene clinics(71.7%). The problems of appointment system(54.0%) and chair time of dental hygiene care services(63.6%) had also inconvenienced to clients. The dental hygiene clinics in school play a crucial role in dental hygiene education to foster the student to be competent as a professional dental hygienist in the future. Therefore, well-organized dental hygiene care program based on dental hygiene process is essential. It is also required to improve the environment of dental hygiene clinics including facilities, appointment system and fee etc.

• Korea Science and Art Forum
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• v.28
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• pp.105-116
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• 2017

This study is a basic research to suggest user-centered general hospital environmental design guidelines, which aims to analyze user's behavior characteristics across generation in general hospital. For this purpose, this study constructed an analysis tool through the literature review with regard to generation and behavior characteristics in general hospital. Besides, an online survey regarding user's behavior in general hospital was conducted targeting from 20s to 60s, 300 persons for each group, total 1,500 persons for about 3 weeks since September 1, 2016. The results of this study are as follows: (1) Based on the generation, there were significant differences in relevant categories of their visiting frequency, visiting purpose, visiting hour, transportation, companion, behavior during the wait and selection of a general hospital. (2) In all generation, they responded that they have visited once or twice per year. People in 20s and 30s responded that their visit for the hospital is to receive specific treatment, while other people in 40s, 50s and 60s visit the hospital majorly for routine check-ups. Therefore, it is imperative for a health check-up center to design an environmental plan that reflects the characteristics of elders in 40s, 50s and 60s. (3) People in 40s, 50s and 60s usually visit a general hospital in the mornings of weekdays, while generations in 20s and 30s responded that they mostly visit the hospital in the mornings of weekend. (4) When they visit a general hospital, people in their 20s are usually using public transportations, while people in their 30s to 60s are using their own vehicle. (5) People in their 20s majorly visited 'lobby'. In older generations, they tend to visit 'outpatient clinic'. Therefore, it is necessary to build an outpatient clinic environment that considers the elderly. (6) Patients majorly responded that they are using their cell phone, while waiting for their clinic call. In elder generations, they responded that they are more likely watching TVs, reading books/magazines or doing nothing. Therefore, it is essential to provide cell-phone related services and environmental supports. Visually attractive media can be utilized for this purpose.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.163-192
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• 1983

In order to facilitate the Korean government's efforts in integrating family planning and maternal & child health at the primary health care level (or township level), the Soon Chun Hyang College of Medicine, with the financial and technical assistance of WHO, has under-taken a service research project. The project has employed a quasi-experimental study design introducing interventions tat provide crucial factors lacking in the ongoing government programs such as midwives and qualified referral physicians. The study is being conducted in three locations, one control area and two study areas. Before introducing trained Nurse/Midewives into the study areas, a baseline prevalence survey was undertaken from 15 July 1981 to 10 August 1981 in selelcted townships of Seosan County. In this sample survey of bath the study and control areas, 2,484 eligible women (97% reponse rate) were interviewed to obtain benchmark data on basic evaluation indicators related to family planning and maternal and child health. The salients results were summarized as follows.: 1. CONTACT RATES WITH HEALTH WORKERS; During the year preceding the survey, 12% of women were visited by government health workers. The primary reason for such visits by health workers was family planning (45% of the visits). About 34% of the women visited the health centers during the year. The primary reason for visiting health centers was immunizations for their children (45% of the visits). 3. FAMILY PLANNING USE RATE; The baseline data showed little difference between women in the study area and the control area on contraceptive use. Approximately 59% were currently using some methods. However, among those current users, almost half were practicing less effective methods of birth control such as rhythm or withdrawal. Among other methods, the tubectomy was the most popular (16%), while use of the IUD, oral pill and condom together reached only 14%. 3. PRENATAL CARE RATE; About 75% of the women reported no prenatal care for their last births (the youngest child of each women), Additionally, among women received prenatal care, over half had only one visit. 4. ATTENDANCE AT DELIVERY; Most of the women surveyed (over 80%) were attended by a non-medical person during their last delivery. These figures are somewhat comparable to the national figure of 84% for remote areas. 5. POSTNATAL CARE; The proportion of women reporting postnatal care was only 4.5%, and postnatal care was not received by the majority of women surveyed. 6. CHILD HEALTH CARE: In contrast to the low rate of maternity care for women themselves, most women reported obtaining immunization care for their children. About 75% of the women obtained Polio and/or DPT, 58% BCG, and 44% Measles vaccine for their children. However, in terms of illness care, while 35% of the women stated that their youngest child had been sick during the month preceding the survey, only 28% of these women took their child to the clinic for treatment. 7. COMPLICATIONS OF PREGNANCY AND DELIVERY AND ABNORMALITIES IN THE NEWBORN; Among all last deliveries, 18% of the women had pregnancy complications and 9% of the women had complications during delivery About 5% of the women reported abnormality in their most recent newborn. 8. REPRODUCTION EFFICIENCY; PERINATAL MORTALITY AND INFANT MORTALITY Based on data from the pregnancy history in this survey, reproduction efficiency was estimated. Out of the 11,154 pregnancies reported by all women surveyed, foetal loss was 21% (almost 16% were induced abortions) and infant deaths before reaching one year old were 3.1%. The reproduction efficiency was, therefore, reduced to 76%. In terms of perinatal and infant mortality rates, the former was 40.2 per 1,000 total births and the latter was 39.3 per 1,000 live births. Both rates described J shaped relationships with age of mothers and parity, and they were also correlated with birth interval and mother's education. In summary, this baseline survey data indicated a need for (1) improving contraceptive practices with more effective methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies and (2) providing better services for maternal and child care to protect wanted pregancies. In the Korean rural setting. the author believes that the latter is more important as the value of each child has increased as a result of the family planning campaign for the past two decades. This calls for more effective integration of Family Planning and MCH programmes to meet the needs of the family in each stage of the child bearing and rearing period with deploying more qualified personnel than the current government program personnel.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.49-71
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• 2003

The purpose of the study is exploring the relationship among patient perceived quality of dental care, satisfaction, and royalty in dental clinics and hospitals. The observation of the study is outpatient visiting dental clinics and hospitals located in Seoul and Kyung-Gi Do area, and surveyed the outpatients. The contents of the survey are consisted with questions including quality of care perceived by the patients, costumer satisfaction, and royalty, and measurement for each question is using five point Likert scale. According to result of bi-variate analysis, there was the significant relationship among specialized care, value of the care, and kindness in quality of dental services, level of care in dentists significantly influenced on costumer satisfaction and costumer royalty, and there was the significant relationship between costumer satisfaction and royalty. According to result of regression analysis on the costumer satisfaction, the costumer satisfaction positively related with the convenience of facility, specialized care, value of care, patient age, number of visit, and spend time for treatment, and housewives and self-employees were likely to satisfy on care than regular employees. By result of full regression model and reduced model on costumer royalty, satisfaction could explain 86% on the costumer royalty such as re-visit and promoting other people, and increase of explain power is not significant when other independent variables joined model (full model). Considering efficiency of model, costumer royalty could be explained by satisfaction only rather than other independent variables used. Finally, This study shows that the social-demographic variables of patient influenced the patient satisfaction, and the patient satisfaction influenced patient royalty directly.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.130-145
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• 1996

Purpose : the management of University Hospital is being challenged in maintenance of reasonable level of income and high ranked reputation by domestic competition with each other and emergence of enterprised owned hospitals. It is imperative that University Hospitals have to make management for patient satisfaction. Furthermore, increased patient's requirement for qualified hospital services (quality assurance) and low-estimated service fee also repress the hospital management condition as well as medical markets open following with Urguay Connection. Due to these unforable conditions surrounding hospital management, -University Hospitals are being pressed to seek improved management strategies. To develope the strategies, we need to have basic understanding about the problems on hospital management and detail information for various patient's requirement. Methods: For this study, we have analysed out-patients from five different University Hospitals located in Seoul, Korea. To obtain the data, we have carried out personal interviews with patients who patients who visit the Out-Patient Clinics of five different University Hospitals using a previously prepared questionnaire. Result: Around 65.7 percent of the visits to University Hospitals were indwelt in the vicinity of 1 hour and motuvation of visiting University Hospital was expending high wuality medical csre in 49.3 percent. The 79.3 percent of the patients have experienced inconvenience during medical care in University Hospital. The most inconvenient condition was waiting for doctors. The 57.2 percent of total patient have experienced rudness. The most rudness condition was registration and receipt desk in 44.4 percent. Patient expect that doctors working in University Hospitals as professors have high and updated medical knowledge(50.4%) and University Hospitals have a high quality medical care system(79.4%). The patient satisfaction was relatively low in 61.1 percent of total patient and revealed high frequency of again visit University Hospital in satisfaction group. Comparison of interhospital analytical study showed quite difference on various problems. Conclusion: Almost patients who visit to Out-Patient Clinic of University Hospital havevisiting motivation to high quality medical care. University Hospitals have several different unsatisfactorial factors and revealed different degree of patient satisfaction. In a future day, University Hospitals have to make use of another University Hospital's merits for approach of Benchmarking and also should be studied decision factors of patient satisfaction and interhospital difference of them.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.241-249
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• 2012

The rapid development of the current information and communication brings big changes and progress in the health service delivery system. And it is becoming the worldwide trend increasingly. As the name of medical information, by more rapid, detail and more quickly to the patients and diagnosis of the disease it provides not only a high level of health care services but also hospitals and related institutions are making increase the efficiency of the work. Among them, the Telemedicine, that system has many advantage which can expect the shorten the waiting time and the uniform high level of medical, etc. without visiting medical institutions. Especially, the most advantage is it can increase the accessibility of information about extensive medical, without regard to the time and place. But this is the reality, which compared speed the development of modern science and technology with lack of operational regulations and mindset. Current in our Medical Law, it regulates the Telemedicine, but it has Institutional, facility, and environmental constraints. Because, there is no detailed legal relationship. And it takes that in terms of a special form called by a non-face-to-face contact with medical practice rather than the scene. Therefore, in this paper will find a way out to activate the Telemedicine by presupposes the development potential is infinite and find the legal issues and improvements.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.57-95
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• 1972

This study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of service by maternity aids concerning maternal and child health in improving simultaneously infant mortality, contraception and vital registration among expectant mothers in rural Korea, where there is less apportunity for maternal and child health care. It is unrealistic to expect to solve this problem in rural Korea through professional persons considering the situation of medical facilities and the socioeconomic condition of residents. So, we intended to adopt a system of services by maternity aids who were educated formally among indigenous women. After the women were trained in maternal and child health, contraception, and registration for a short period, they were assigned as a maternity aids to each village to help with various activities concerning maternal and child health, for example, registration of pregnant women, home visiting to check for complications, supplying of delivery kits, attendance at delivery, persuasion of contraception, and invitation for registration and so on. Mean-while, four researchers called on the maternity aids to collect materials concerning vital events, maternal child health, contraception and registration, and to give further instruction and supervision as the program proceeded. A. Changes of women's attitude by services of maternity aid. Now, we examined to what extent' such a service system to expectant mothers affected a change in attitude of women residing in the study area as compared to women of the control area. 1) In the birth and death places, there were no changes between last and present infants, in study or control area. 2) In regard to attendants at delivery, there were no changes except for a small percentage of attendance (8%) by maternity aid in study area. But, I expect that more maternity sids could be used as attendants at delivery if they would be trained further and if there was more explanation to the residents about such a service. 3) Considering the rate of utilization of sterilized delivery kit, I am sure that more than 90 percent would be used if the delivery kit were supplied in the proper time. There were significant differences in rates between the study and the control areas. 4) Taking into consideration the utilization rate of the clinic for prenatal care and well baby care, if suck facilities were installed, it would probably be well utilized. 5) In the contraception, the rate of approval was as high as 89 percent in study area as compared to 82 percent in the control area. 6) Considering the rate of pre-and post-partum acceptance on contraception were as much as 70 percent or more, if motivation to use contraception was given to them adequately, the government could reach the goals for family planning as planned. 7) In the vital registration, the rate of birth registration in the study area was some what improved compared to that of the control area, while the rate of death registration was not changed at all. Taking into account the fact that the rate of confirmation of vital events by maternity aids was remarkably high, if the registration system changed to a 'notification' system instead of formal registration ststem, it would be improved significantly compared to present system. B. Effect of the project Thus, with changes in the residents' attitude, was there a reduction in the infant death rate? 1) It is very difficult problem to compare the mortality of infants between last and present infants, because many women don't want to answer accurately about their dead children especially the infants that died within a few days after birth. In this study the data of present death comes from the maternity aides who followed up every pregnancy they had recorded to see what had happened. They seem to have very reliable information on what happened in first few weeks with follow up visitits to check out later changes. From these calculaton, when we compared the rate of infant death between last and present infant, there was remarkable reduction of death rate for present infant compare to that of last children, namely, the former was 30, while the latter 42. The figure is the lowest rate that I have ever heard. As the quality of data we could assess by comparing the causes of death. In the current death rate by communicable disease was much lower compare to the last child especially, tetanus cases and pneumonia. 2) Next, how many respondents used contraception after birth because of frequent contact with the maternity aid. In the registered cases, the respondents showed a tendency to practice contraception at an earlier age and with a small number of children. In a comparison of the rate of contraception between the study and the control area, the rate in the former was significantly higher than that of the latter. What is more, the proportion favoring smaller numbers of children and younger women rose in the study area as compared to the control area. 3) Regarding vital registration, though the rate of registration was gradually improved by efforts of maternity aid, it would be better to change the registration system. 4) In the crude birth rate, the rate in the study area was 22.2 while in the control area was 26.5. Natural increase rate showed 15.4 in the study area, while control area was 19.1. 5) In assessment of the efficiency of the maternity aids judging by the cost-effect viewpoint, the workers in the Medium area seemed to be more efficiency than those of other areas.