• Health Policy and Management
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.368-379
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• 2022

Background: This study aimed to establish a strategy to improve the poor working environment and working conditions among long-term healthcare workers in Korea. Methods: A total of 600 questionnaires with which long-term health care workers participated in the targeted base areas of each city and province nationwide were distributed directly and 525 responses were collected and 506 responses were analyzed. Surveys, on-site field visits, and in-depth interviews were also conducted to understand the working environment as well as conditions and establish a strategy for improving the working environment among long-term healthcare workers to understand the demands of working conditions and working conditions. Results: Korean long-term care workers firstly and mostly enumerated their risk factors for ill-health when lifting or moving elderly recipients directly by hand (69.9%), followed by increased physical workload with old beds, tools, and facilities (42.3%) in the workplaces, shortage of manpower (32%), and source of infection (30%). To improve the working environment as well as conditions, Korean long-term care workers considered improving low-wage structures, ergonomic improvements to solve excessive physical loads, and increasing various bonus payments as well as implementing the salary system, positive social awareness, and increasing resting time. Of 506 responses, 92.3% replied that the long-term care insurance system for the elderly should be developed to expand publicization at the national level. Conclusion: This study proposes to improve the low-wage structure of Korean long-term care workers, automation and improvement of facilities, equipment, and tools to eliminate excessive physical loads (beneficiary elderly lifting), and reduction of night labor.

• Proceeding of Spring/Autumn Annual Conference of KHA
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.215-219
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• 2011

Along with the rapid increase of the elderly population, our country is facing the elderly problem as a social issue due to nuclear family, the increase of female social activities and recognition changes about the elderly support. In this connection, the welfare services to protect the overall elderly is requested urgently and the countries which have been experiencing aging earlier than our country are studying a lot a community daycare method which delays moving of the elderly into facilities as long as possible, reduces costs and efficiently provides services in order to curtail the big burden to the national economy. As one of these solutions, there is the elderly daycare center and this can be considered to be a compromising service type to correspond to our social changes, make individual and social supports without damage to the sense of value about support. Therefore, the space for the elderly can keep up with the falloff of mental and physical functions, dementia and geriatric diseases according to aging and careful consideration about the space considering stability and convenience is required. At this point, this study has the purpose to plan a daycare center which reflects the characteristics of the elderly to protect them within the community safely and comfortably. As for the research method, case study was conducted to understand the overall situation on the space plan of the daycare center for 5 daycare centers located in Seoul and found out problems. In addition, interview research was conducted for the heads of daycare centers or social workers, care workers and photographing and drawing collection were performed simultaneously. From the generalization of the above study, a space plan for a daycare center considering the characteristics of the elderly was provided.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.324-335
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• 1998

This study describes the extent of recognition of problems to the aged in a future society, the recognition and necessity of day care facilities, and the service contents and patterns preferred as a method of mediation for nursing the aged and increasing their quality of life. It also tries to certify the relations between those subjects. The result of the study is as follows: 1. Concerning problems of the aged of social significance the aged of the next generation consider the difficulties in nursing the aged to be the most important at 63.6%. 2. Concerning the nursing of parents, 49.4% of those answered 'children should take care of their parents and live together', while 46.7% answered that 'it is enough for children to provide an economic support, not necessarily living together. 3. Concerning information of day care facilities, 66.9% answered that they have no information. 4. Concerning the use of day care facilities, 54.6% answered that 'they would under certain circumstances', and 21.0% that 'they had better use them in the future'. 5. Concerning the feelings of the aged using day care facilities, 46.6% say 'they do not look poor', and 33.4% said that 'they look a little poor'. 6. Concerning the reasons for using day care facilities, 56.1% answered' because children do not proride care', and 48.5% answered 'because their economic ability is not sufficient'. 7. Concerning the programs potentially needed, food supply, medical services and physical therapy were ranked in that order. 8. Concerning social facilities necessary for the aged, centers that specialize in dementia, free day care facilities, home care services, and fee - based day care centers were ranked in that order. 9. Concerning institutions providing day care, welfare centers for the aged, those centers auxiliary to hospitals, asylums, and individuals were ranked in that order. 10. Concerning the responsibity running day care facilities, social workers, doctors/nursing assistants, nurses, and entrusted visitors were ranked in that order. Based on the results of this study, the study proposes that the study of applied cases of therapy in day care facilities for the aged continue.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.57-82
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• 2012

The purpose of the study is to suggest the measure for the improvement of job satisfaction and level of empowerment of sanatoriums' social workers by analyzing factors of empowerments' effect on the job satisfaction, and investigating level of empowerment and job satisfaction of social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped. The result of investigation and analysis on subjects of 420 social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped in Youngnam area for this is as follows: First, job characteristic that is empowerments' influence factor of sanatoriums' social workers is appeared in order of feedback, and function variety, and in organization characteristic is appeared in order of leadership, reward, and employee development. Second, level of empowerment that is recognized by sanatoriums' social workers is appeared a little higher than normal level and significance is appeared highest, and next are capability, self-determination ability, and influence. Third, features that showed significant difference with significance in general characteristic of sanatoriums' social workers were 'sex', 'marital status', and 'religion', and features that showed significant difference with capability were sex, age, marital status, academic background, and employment history. And features that showed significant difference with self-determination ability were sex, age, marital status, and employment history, and features that showed significant difference with influence were sex, age, employment history and types of facilities. Fourth, the whole average of job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers was 3.82 out of 5, which is generally high, features that showed significant difference statistically were age, marital status, academic background, employment history, and types of facilities. Thus, job satisfaction was appeared as high as 'more than age of thirty' in age, 'married' in marital status, 'under graduates of colleges' in academic background, and 'less than three years' in employment history. Fifth, as for factors that had influence on job satisfaction, the indirect effect with empowerment was appeared that had significant effect in organization characteristic, and had few effect in organization features. On these results, practical measures to increase job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers are as follows: First, political approach is required to standardize duty system(by various types of facilities and clients' characteristic) of social workers of sanatoriums for elderly and the handicapped, and help to do the role as professionals with giving better treatment and building self-respect by enough reward. Second, to suggest chances to perform the responsibility for the duty of the scenes by the regular supervision, establish regular supervision system of social workers of sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped, and the extension of duty to increase the functional varieties. Third, it is required to motivate to have self confidence for the work and to use potential ability with transforming leadership, and to have more chances of education for the self-development. To increase job satisfaction of sanatoriums' social workers who give direct services in sanatoriums for the elderly and the handicapped, more active and positive empowerment's level improvement is in need by improvement of empowerment for them.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.107-113
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of the job environment of nursing care workers on organizational commitment and to verify the mediating effect of job satisfaction based on this. Data collection was conducted on 340 nursing care workers, centering on elderly care facilities in Gyeonggi-do, and the uncollected questionnaires and abnormalities were removed and the final 267 were selected as the subjects of the study. Data analysis results were derived through SPSS WIN 2.0 and PROCESS Macro V3.5, and Hayes (2013)'s Macro Model Number 4 was applied to verify the mediating effect of job satisfaction. As a result of the analysis, the partial mediating effect of the job satisfaction was confirmed in the effect of the job environment of the caregiver on organizational commitment. Based on the analysis results, practical and policy suggestions for improving the job environment and increasing job satisfaction of nursing caregivers, and follow-up studies were proposed to overcome the limitations of this study.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.525-534
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• 2019

Korea is facing one of the fastest aging population problems in the world due to the extension of life expectancy and low birth rates due to economic development and the development of health care. It has become difficult to take care of elderly people in need of long-term care at home, and social problems such as dementia and the increase in stroke cases are serious problems. The government is enacting and implementing the Long-Term Care Insurance Act for the purpose of improving the quality of life for senior citizens subject to long-term care and alleviating the burden of family support in order to solve such social structure and problems for senior citizens. However, as a result of the implementation of the long-term care insurance system for the elderly, the privatization of the facilities and the disorder are causing widespread requests for public accountability of the services and the enhancement of the quality of the facilities. In addition, various arrangements are needed for the production of low-wage medical care workers, tasks for quality improvement, problems regarding financing methods, and so on. In order to maintain and develop the long-term care insurance system for the elderly, the government will consider seeking ways to improve the legal and institutional aspects according to changes in the social environment of the age, as well as seeking mental and psychological measures for the stabilization of old life as well as physical health.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.156-172
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• 2021

Objectives: To investigate the trends of industrial injuries among long-term health care workers in Korea Methods: T7866 injuries were selected from the total industrial injuries approved by the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act(Occupational Safety and Health Act) among long-term health care workers between 2007 and 2016 in Korea. We analyzied the trends of industrial injuries according to work process, occurrence type, and causes. Results: The industrial injuries among long-term health care workers increased since 2012. The mostly occurred area for industrial injuries were low back areas, which is related that the most serious industrial injuries occurred when the one long-term healthcare worker lift manually the recipient, from bed(ondol, Korean floor heating system) to a wheelchair, bed to bath bed, and wheelchair to bath chair. In addition to this, lack of workforce, increased work intensity due to overwork contributed the increasing of occupational injury. Conclusions: This study suggests that the main causes of industrial injuries were Lack of facilities and equipment for small private long-term care institutions, The physical load that goes into lifting the recipient directly, work intensity such as excessive workload and increased work speed. We suggest that the social publicization of long-term care service for the elderly, avoiding ways to lift recipients directly, introducing lifting machines as well as improving working methods, and reducing the workload of caregivers are required.

• Journal of Korean Dental Hygiene Science
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.13-25
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• 2023

Background: This study was conducted to confirm the service quality management of care workers, who are direct service personnel of long-term care insurance for the elderly, using unstructured big data. Methods: Using a textome, this study collected and analyzed unstructured social data related to care workers' service quality. Frequency, TF-IDF, centrality, semantic network, and CONCOR analyses were conducted on the top 50 keywords collected by crawling the data. Results: As a result of frequency analysis, the top-ranked keywords were 'Long-term care services,' 'Care workers,' 'Quality of care services,' 'Long term care,' 'Long term care facilities,' 'Enhancement,' 'Elderly,' 'Treatment,' 'Improvement,' and 'Necessity.' The results of degree centrality and eigenvector centrality were almost the same as those of the frequency analysis. As a result of the CONCOR analysis, it was found that the improvement in the quality of long-term care services, the operation of the long-term care services, the long-term care services system, and the perception of the psychological aspects of the care workers were of high concern. Conclusion: This study contributes to setting various directions for improving the service quality of care workers by presenting perceptions related to the service quality of care workers as a meaningful group.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.59-70
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to develop a program that allows older women to provide voluntary services for child nursing facilities, making those women have more social participation, effectively their spare time and ultimately improve the quality of their life. Results of the study can be described as follows. First, social requests about the use of older women as volunteers for child nursing services were analyzed to show that most people working at child nursing facilities perceived lack in the number of child nursing teachers. Those people recognized the need of using older women as service volunteers for the facilities. They were very positive about such use. Second, it is recommendable that volunteers of child nursing service should be not too much older women, or below 65. Voluntary activities that those women participate include taking care of younger children, reading interesting stories for children, helping works of child homes, teaching manners and living attitudes, instructing dietary etiquettes and cooking. Voluntary service activities should be made 1 to 3 times a week, 1 to 2 hours a time, considering psychological and physical states of older people. Third, such older volunteers should be educated about 6 areas, 'the operation and management of child homes, 'practices', 'child health and safety', 'the quality of child nursing', 'child development and counseling' and 'voluntary service training'. Out of these six areas, 'child health and safety' and 'voluntary service training' are more required to be instructed. such training needs to focus on activities in which older women can actually engage as volunteers. Fourth, it is advisable that the recruitment and management of such volunteers are led by the city and that the development of training programs for voluntary service activities and education of the volunteers are referred to universities.

• 한국노년학
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.1127-1148
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• 2018

Care-stress among the dementia caregivers has been an important issue. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the dementia elderly's symptoms on the primary caregivers'care -stress. In addition, the moderators, the expert support and the family support, were used to examine the moderating effects between the symptoms and the care-stress. The data was obtained at 10 day-care facilities and services in Seoul, Gyeonggi and Busan province in South Korea. A total of 191 participants were analyzed. They were the spouses or the adult children of the dementia elderly who were diagnosed with dementia within five years. This study was conducted in multiple regression analysis. The main findings are as follows. First of all, the symptoms that the dementia elderly show were significantly associated with the primary caregivers' care-stress. Also, the interactive variable with the expert support was statistically significant. However, it was not significant with the family support. This means that only the expert support from doctors, nurses or social workers decreased the caregivers' care-stress. The implications of this study are 1) the necessities of the education that covers the specific symptoms of the dementia patients', 2) the extension of the supportive policies for caregivers' care-stress, 3) the necessities of more allocation of the dementia specialists in the practical settings and cooperative systems among the dementia specialists in various fields, and 4) the enhancement of the family function among families who have a dementia elderly as a family member.