• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.169-178
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• 2004

Purpose: The aim of the study was to assess changes of the attitudes and opinions about disclosure of cancer diagnosis to patients. Methods: We analyzed the attitudes and opinions of in-patients with metastatic cancer, their families, physicians, nurses, medical students, nursing students. Three questionnaires were used for in-patients, families, and surroundings in hospital. Data was collected in the St. Mary hospital for 3 months from October, 2002. We investigated the preference of disclosure, the reason the patients should be informed of disclosure, when, how and who to tell the cancer diagnosis to patients. 242 persons participated in these questionnaires (50 in-patients, 50 their families, 51 physicians and nurses, 41 medical students, 50 nursing students). Only 34 in-patients with metastatic cancer were enrolled, and so 16 in-patients with lymphoma were added. All in-patients were undergoing anticancer chemotherapy. Results: 89.3% of the participants wanted to be told about disclosure of cancer and terminal illness (in-patients 98.0%, their families 88.0%, physicians and nurses 90.2%, medical students 73.2%, nursing students 94.0%, in-patients with metastatic cancer 97.1%). 79.8% of the respondents hoped that the moment to tell the truth was immediately when the disease was diagnosed (in-patients 94.0%, their families 80.0%, physicians and nurses 68.6%, medical students 68.3%, nursing students 86.0%). 64.4% of all prefered to be told the truth once for alt including patients' diagnosis, present status and prognosis (in-patients 81.6%, their families 66.0%, physicians and nurses 56.0%, medical students 48.8%, nursing students 70.0%). Most indicated the first reason to be told the truth was the possibility to participate in treatment design. 86.4% responded that physicians were the proper persons to disclose the diagnosis. Conclusion: Not only in-patients, families but also physicians, nurses, medical students and nursing students all preferred the disclosure of cancer diagnosis. This preference was increased compared with the previous papers. The first reason to be told the truth was the possibility to participate in treatment design. Most of the participants wanted to be told the truth once for all.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.30-35
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• 2012

Purposes: Most medical schools in Korea do not provide adequate education in end-of-life care. This study was designed to illustrate the need to improve end-of-life care education and to assess the effect of the education on fourth-year medical students' awareness and attitude towards hospice and palliative care for terminally ill patients. Methods: One hundred sixty six fourth-year medical students were surveyed with questionnaires on end-of-life care before and after they received the education. Results: Before receiving the education, students most frequently answered "at the end of life" (33.6%) was appropriate time to write an advance medical directive. After the education, the most frequent answer was "in healthy status" (58.7%). More students agreed to withholding or withdrawing futile life-sustaining treatment increased after the education (48.1% vs. 92.5% (P<0.001) for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, 38.3% vs. 92.5% (P<0.001) for intubation and mechanical ventilation, 39.1% vs. 85.8% (P<0.001) for inotropics, 60.9% vs. 94.8% (P<0.001) for dialysis and 27.8% vs. 56.0% (P<0.001) for total parenteral nutrition). Significantly more students opposed euthanasia after the education (46.6% vs. 82.1%, P<0.001). All students agreed to the need for education in end-of-life care. Conclusion: After reflecting on the meaning of death through the end-of-life care education, most students recognized the need for the education. The education brought remarkable changes in students' awareness and attitude towards patients at the end of life. We suggest end-of-life care education should be included in the regular curriculum of all medical schools in Korea.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.140-146
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• 2008

Purpose: Sooner of later, end-of-life care decision-making will unfold and be settled during the professional lives of medical students. However, there is prevalent ambiguity and uncertainty between the palliative treatment and euthanasia. We conducted this survey to investigate attitudes of medical students towards end-of-life making decisions, and to find out which factors primarily influenced the attitudes. Methods: A study was conducted among medical students at one university, the Republic of Korea. A written questionnaire was sent to all the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-year medical students. It presented 5 statements on end-of-life decision-making. Students were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with each statement. Results: The response rate was 74.4%, and 267 questionnaires were analyzed. Percentages of agreement with each statements on Voluntary active euthanasia (VAE), Physician assisted suicide (PAS), Withholding life-sustaining management, Withdrawing life-sustaining management, and Terminal sedation (TS) was 37.1%, 21.7%, 58.4%, 60.3%, and 41.6%, respectively. The grade of students, religious activity, and educational experience were determinant factors. Agreement on each statements was higher in the low religious activity group than in the high religious activity group. Agreement on TS was higher among 3rd year students during their clerkship than among 1st and 2nd year students. Age of students and the experience of dying-people care had no significant influence. Conclusion: In end-of-life decision-making, religious and educational factors influenced medical students' attitudes. Especially, the experience of education during clerkship had significant influence on the attitude. Proper teaching on end-of-life decisions should further be considered during medical students' clerkship.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.166-173
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• 2019

Purpose: High-quality hospice and palliative medicine curricula are necessary in Korean medical schools. This study evaluated changes in students' knowledge and attitudes toward both hospice and palliative care following the completion of a course on these topics, as well as the course's overall role in the basic medical education curriculum. Methods: Questionnaires measuring knowledge and attitudes were collected before and after the course from 76 fourth-year medical students, who had received instructions integrating both hospice and palliative care in 2016. Results: The questionnaire item "Select the correct answer on the use of opioid pain control in hospice and palliative care" changed the most in terms of number of correct answers pre- and post-course (3.50 and 5.32, respectively; P<0.001). Pre- and post-course, the numbers of students who answered "Strongly Agree" and "Agree" to questions concerning their attitudes toward hospice and palliative care ("I know the purposes and roles of hospice and palliative care") were 17 (22.4%) and 65 (85.6%), respectively (P≤0.001). Affirmative responses also increased for "As a pre-physician, I know when to describe and advise hospice and palliative care to patients", from 22 (28.9%) to 65 (85.6%; P≤0.001). Conclusion: This study showed that comprehensive hospice education in the form of an integrated educational course might promote changes in medical students' knowledge and attitudes toward hospice and palliative medicine.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Oral Health
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.124-129
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• 2018

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of oral health-related factors on the oral health knowledge, attitude, and practice of students of the Department of Dental Hygiene major, Health-related major, General major, and to provide primary data to improve the oral care ability of university students. Methods: After institutional review board approval, the study was conducted from May 15 to December 1, 2017. All 363 university students in Busan completed a questionnaire. In total, 332 questionnaires were analyzed. Thirty-one cases were excluded due to unreasonable responses. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 24.0. Results: Analysis of the factors related to knowledge, attitude, and practice of oral health according to the major field of study of the respondents indicated that students in the Dental Hygiene major demonstrated significantly better results. Conclusions: It is necessary to determine a way to manage the oral health of university students. In addition, voluntary participation of universities to improve oral health of university students is desirable. It is also necessary to establish national health policies and a national health care education curriculum for university students.

• Korean Medical Education Review
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.150-155
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• 2018

End-of-life care competencies have been perceived as important and essential, so it has been suggested that end-of-life care be studied in undergraduate medical education. However, end-of-life care curriculum has mostly focused on acquisition of knowledge and skills rather than attitudes. Therefore, we aimed to explore whether education about death affects medical students' attitudes towards care for dying patients and perception of death anxiety, meaning in life, and self-esteem. A total of 15 first- or second-year medical students were surveyed with questionnaires before and after completing a 6-week death education course. Paired data analysis showed that participants' attitudes towards caring for terminally ill patients and their caregivers improved significantly (t=-2.84, p=0.013) with an effect size of 0.73. In contrast, no significant changes were found in death anxiety, meaning in life, or self-esteem. All participants agreed that formal teaching about death and dying must be encouraged in medical schools. Our results suggest that death education may positively influence attitudes towards end-of-life care. Although replication with larger samples is necessary, this preliminary finding may support the importance of developmentally appropriate end-of-life care education in medical schools.

• Journal of vocational education research
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.161-177
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• 2011

The major purpose of this study is to see the effects of medical students' self-regulated learning on career adaptability. Therefore, we carried out self-regulated learning and career adaptability tests for the 252 medical students belong to the K university to examine the above subject. Then the respondents were divided into two groups according to the level of career adaptability to see the group differences on self-regulated learning. The results of this research are as follows. The group of high career adaptability was scored higher than the lower scored group in every domains of self-regulated learning except test anxiety. And also the result of regression analysis to see the effects of self-regulated learning on sub-domains of the career adaptability like responsibility, interpersonal relationship, proactivity, positive attitude showed statistically significant differences to the total score of career adaptability except motivation controlling. Based on the above results, this study suggest the need of mediation related with self-regulation, and also the need of counselling and education to help the medical students suffering from adaptability. Furthermore, suggest following studies searching the multiple variables affecting career adaptability.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.28 no.1 s.49
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• pp.85-101
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• 1995

This study was carried out to evaluate the associations between lifestyles and Body Mass Index in a group of 349 male and 65 female medical students, ages 17 to 31 years. 20.0% of male students and 3.1% of female students showed the over weight in the classification of obesity by Japan Society for Study of Obesity. There was no statistically significance in the comparison of the height, body weight, body mass index, obesity index and body fat(%) according to grade in both sexes. But male students showed increasing tendency of waist-hip ratio with grade. According to obesity category, there was significant difference in the comparison of body weight, body mass index, obesity index, waist-hip ratio and body fat(%), but height. Body mass index was positively related with waist-hip ratio(r=0.6150, p=0.0001) and fat(%)(r=0.5101, p=0.0001) in males and waist-hip ratio (r=0.4734, p=0.001) and fat(%)(r=0.4522, p=0.002) in females. This study provides an opportunity to further examine the relationship of sociddemographic factors and health behaviors to obesity, and suggest the basic concept to match the obesity study to general epidemiological cohort studies for controlling of chronic adult diseases.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.238-245
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• 2004

Objectives : This study was conducted to examine the smoking behaviors and the relationship between smoking and other health behaviors among medical students. Methods : A self-administrated questionnaire was administered to a sample of 1,775 students from four medical schools between April and May 2003. Due to the small number of female smokers, the characteristics of smoking behaviors were analyzed only for males. Results : A total of 1,367 students (920 males and 447 females) completed the questionnaires, with an overall response rate of 77.7%. The smoking rates for males and females were 31.5, and 2.2%, respectively. Among the male smokers, 70.7% smoked daily, and 39.0% smoked one pack or more per day. Male students on medical course were more likely to smoke daily, and one pack or more per day, than those on premedical course. Male daily smokers desired to quit smoking less than occasional smokers, and 65.0% of male daily smokers were not ready to quit compared with 37.8% of the occasional smokers. Among the male daily smokers, 29.6% were severely nicotine dependent. The most common reason for not to quit smoking among male smokers was 'no alternative stress coping method' (44.4%), followed by 'lack of will power' (25.4%), and 'no need to quit' (19.4%). Compared with male non-smokers, male smokers were more likely to drink alcohol more often and in larger amounts, take coffee more often, eat breakfast less regularly, and be overweight or obese. Conclusions : The results of this study suggest that many male medical students were serious smokers, especially those on medical course. It is necessary to install a smoking prevention program for pre-medical students, provide effective smoking cessation methods for smokers, teach positive stress coping methods, and make the school environment suitable for coping with stress.