• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.339-346
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• 2018

Background: Workplace bulling is a pervasive phenomenon with negative consequences for the health of victims and the productivity of organizations. The aim of this study was to measure the prevalence and forms of workplace bullying among employees working at the public health-care sector of Cyprus using the Greek version of Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terror (LIPT) instrument. Methods: A translation process was followed from the French to the Greek version of LIPT questionnaire. Test-retest reliability expressed by Pearson's correlation coefficient was 0.98 indicating excellent reproducibility. Internal consistency reliability assessed by Cronbach ${\alpha}$ coefficient was 0.87 suggesting high reliability. LIPT instrument was distributed among 403 employees working at the primary health-care setting and at the largest public hospital of Cyprus with response rate of 73.4%. Results: Women comprised the majority of participants (71.4%). Mean age was 43.3 years. Prevalence of workplace bulling according to Leymann's definition was 5.9%. Most common forms of bullying were "Being continuously interrupted" (17.2%) and "continuously being given new work assignments" (13.5%). Women were significantly more often exposed to at least one mobbing behavior than men within the previous year (49% vs. 35.7%, p = 0.038), whereas nurses were significantly exposed to at least one mobbing behavior as compared to physicians (53.3% vs. 31.4%, p = 0.004). Conclusion: This was the first study that examined the prevalence of workplace bullying in the public health-care sector by elaborating the Greek version of LIPT instrument. Results showed that workplace bullying is a common and complex phenomenon among health-care organizations.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.703-710
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• 2012

Purpose : The aim of this study is to review the current status of healthcare provision and its human resources administrative management and propose a coordinated human resource management plan for the more efficient operations of healthcare organizations. Methods : We reviewed the literature and held discussions with officials from the United States Department of Health and Human Services to survey United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps operations. In addition, we surveyed the literature to analyze the current structure and responsibilities of governing bodies involved in public healthcare in Korea. Results : In Korea, there are several administrative offices involved in public health: the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Defense, the Environment Ministry and others. Since these diverse agencies don't integrate their operations, it is difficult to grasp their management of both public healthcare services and their personnel. A potential model is the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a sub-group of the Department of Health and Human Services and an elite team of highly qualified, public health professionals, which coordinates and manages the overall work and personnel of diverse healthcare organizations. Conclusion : We suggest the establishment of a federal level, public health administrative department of human resource management to centralize and coordinate the existing, disparate healthcare administrative agencies.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.52-65
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• 2019

Purpose: Outbreaks resulting from medication injections have recently been on the rise in Korea despite various established guidelines. The objective of this study was to assess the degree to which healthcare professionals are aware of safe injection practice guidelines and to account for the adherence to and the deviation from safe injection guidelines formulated by healthcare providers. Methods: In November 2016, a cross-sectional anonymous questionnaire covering general characteristics of injections, patient safety culture, awareness of safe injection practices, and adherence to and barriers to safe injection guidelines was issued to healthcare providers who administer medication injections or manage and supervise these injections (N=550). Multivariate logistic regression analysis via enter method was performed to define the influencing factors of adherence of safe injection practices. Results: On average, respondents adhere to 17 of the 24 guidelines. Multivariate logistic regression found that those who were more likely to adhere to safe injection guidelines either underwent a patient safety training experience within the last year, provided care in a setting characterized by a highly developed patient safety culture, or were employed as physicians or nurses, as opposed to some other type of care provider. Barriers to safe injection guidelines were attributable to; thoughts of waste to discard leftover medicine, provisions that made adherence cumbersome, a weak culture of compliance, and insufficient amounts of injectable medicine, products, and education. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that controllable factors like training experience of healthcare providers and patient safety culture were positively associated with adherence to safe injection practices. It was suggested that the training of healthcare providers on safe injection practices be a continuous process to promote patient safety. Additionally, there should be an increased focus on developing and implementing policies to improve patient safety culture from a prevention rather than post-management perspective.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.273-283
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• 2013

The traditional medical equipments are devices used by medical professionals but not used in public environment. Common people, however, require light-weight medical devices to make healthcare for themselves nowadays. Those medical devices are used to monitor personal health status such as blood pulse, blood pressure, diabetes. Also, some of them are operated in mobile environment called u-healthcare. This paper implements a portable healthcare system composed of $SpO_2$(Saturation of Partial Pressure Oxygen) sensors and a gateway for detecting hypoxemia during people's leasure activity such as climbing or hiking. The $SpO_2$ sensor is designed as watch style to support dynamic exercise and the gateway is designed as necklace style to support the elderly. The result of a performance evaluation shows that the performance of the $SpO_2$ sensor using reflection technology is not lower than that of a clairvoyant styled $SpO_2$ sensor.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.83-93
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• 2021

COVID-19 poses a major risk to global health, highlighting the importance of faster and proper diagnosis. To handle the rise in the number of patients and eliminate redundant tests, healthcare information exchange and medical data are transmitted between healthcare centres. Medical data sharing helps speed up patient treatment; consequently, exchanging healthcare data is the requirement of the present era. Since healthcare professionals share data through the internet, security remains a critical challenge, which needs to be addressed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, computed tomography (CT) and X-ray images play a vital part in the diagnosis process, constituting information that needs to be shared among hospitals. Encryption and image steganography techniques can be employed to achieve secure data transmission of COVID-19 images. This study presents a new encryption with the image steganography model for secure data transmission (EIS-SDT) for COVID-19 diagnosis. The EIS-SDT model uses a multilevel discrete wavelet transform for image decomposition and Manta Ray Foraging Optimization algorithm for optimal pixel selection. The EIS-SDT method uses a double logistic chaotic map (DLCM) is employed for secret image encryption. The application of the DLCM-based encryption procedure provides an additional level of security to the image steganography technique. An extensive simulation results analysis ensures the effective performance of the EIS-SDT model and the results are investigated under several evaluation parameters. The outcome indicates that the EIS-SDT model has outperformed the existing methods considerably.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.2141-2149
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• 2009

This research is based upon the nursing statistical data published by the Institute of Nursing Policy in 2007, on behalf of Korea nursing association. We analyzed the problems on the healthcare human resources supply in Korea. We suggest that a solution is to adopt immigration policy for foreign workforce employment. The result of the research shows that more than 1,000 nurses are registrated every year except for 2004, according to the yearly status of healthcare jobs. The variance of doctors' registration was quite significant. Compared to 750 registrations in 2004, 4000 doctors were registered in 2002. The healthcare accounts for the property of citizens in terms, which represents the health and lives of everyone, so the country must take all measures to supply the healthcare services in need. Focusing on the underdeveloped region where it is difficult to approach the medical services, the foreign workforce could be added into the healthcare profession field. We conclude that employing foreign healthcare professionals will contribute to the improvement of lives in those people living in underdeveloped region, as well as unity of the local community.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.14-34
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• 2013

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to provide comprehensive information of qualification systems of developed countries needed to establish our national system for QI(Quality improvement) specialists. Methods: All articles related to any applicable domestic or foreign countries' laws, operational status, and detailed programs for professional qualification system of QI were reviewed. Result: In the United States, a non-profit organization, Healthcare Quality Certification Commission (HQCC) has set the policies, procedures and standards in the field of health care quality. And qualification system of CPHQ (certified professional in healthcare quality) has been operated in order to authenticate the qualifications in the field of quality management. IBQH(international Board for quality in healthcare), a qualification system of experts in the United Kingdom, was designed to assist the qualification of professionals to improve the quality of healthcare. In addition, Health Research Center of Feinberg School of Medicine in Northwestern University has been operating Master's and doctoral degree programs in the field of the quality of care and patient safety and IHI (institute for healthcare improvement) open school was operating a professional training course related to the quality of care and patient safety. Conclusion: Quantity and complexity of information of the quality of care and patient safety have been increased. For reform of the health care system, a special training course of the expertise and leadership are needed. So far, there is no national professional certification courses in our nation. Therefore essential job skill should be acquired individually. For systematic and effective quality improvement activities, the educational and certification system with professional development model are needed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.49-58
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• 2009

Healthcare organizations need mutual cooperation among various medical professionals in order to carry out the performance of their duties spite of haying a strong job specialization and independence based on license. However, spite of the importance of leadership roles, there have not been enough researches dealt with leadership effect under the complex duties' relationship of a healthcare organization. This study suggested a new model by combining characteristics of leadership style, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment using Structural Equation Model (SEM). The data were self-administered questionnaires collected in 2006 from 437 employees (nurses, medical technicians, and administrative staffs) of 5 hospitals located in Seoul. The items of questionnaire were composed as a method of choosing new leadership style based on the Bass's standardized questionnaire on a Iransactionaljtransformational leadership combining the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire-XII (LBDQ-XII) of the Ohio State University and Graen and Uhl-Bien's LMK scale through simulation techniques responding to organizational commitment. As a result, the leadership style increasing employees' self-confidence and having continuous response relationship between managers and employees improved their discretion and empowerment as well as worthwhileness and pride. However, the leadership style emphasizing reward and a sense of duty brought about a bed result that was not able to effectively respond to employees' discretion and empowerment and even weakened their worthwhileness and pride. After all, the leadership style based on vision and change had an effect on organizational commitment but the other one based on reward and a sense of duty seemed to be unsuccessful in organizational commitment. Therefore, the desirable leadership in a healthcare organization should be based on employees' self-confidence and continuous response relationship between managers and employees.

• Korean Journal of Family Social Work
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• no.61
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• pp.59-91
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• 2018

Using a Consensus Qualitative Research approach, this study aimed to identify the ageism and explore age-integration as a solution of age discrimination that occurs during the delivery of medical services by nine healthcare professionals who have experience in treating elderly patients. There were two-sided confession has shown by health care professionals about the Ageism. They reported that they don't discriminate by age. However, They also appealed an inconvenience due to the elderly. There were real Ageism in the Healthcare Professional site as a way of Unsuitable care, elderly alienation and dependence on caregivers, polarization of medical service and double discrimination against poor elderly. They found it difficult to offer age integrated health care as a means to mitigate or solve. However they have sought to break barriers to communication, provided a comfortable environment not only for senior citizens but also for all others, and have diversified institutional and service standards. To ensure the healthy life and proper medical service of the rapidly increasing elderly patients, we proposed to do critical review of the factors in the Korean medical system that accelerate the Ageism, reorganization of the health care system for the poor elderly, including the curriculum associated with age-integrating within the health care professional education system, raising the Geriatric Medical Service and the relating professionals and improvements in perception of the health care domains for the elderly and older adults.

• International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.101-120
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• 2017

Healthcare professionals have edited many health questions (HQs) and their answers for healthcare consumers on the Internet. The HQs provide both readable and reliable health information, and hence retrieval of those HQs that are relevant to a given question is essential for health education and promotion through the Internet. However, retrieval of relevant HQs needs to be based on the recognition of the intention of each HQ, which is difficult to be done by predefining syntactic and semantic rules. We thus model the intention recognition problem as a text classification problem, and develop two techniques to improve a learning-based text classifier for the problem. The two techniques improve the classifier by location-based and area-based feature weightings, respectively. Experimental results show that, the two techniques can work together to significantly improve a Support Vector Machine classifier in both the recognition of HQ intentions and the retrieval of relevant HQs.