• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.43-73
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• 2016

Purpose: The aims of this study were to assess the presence of core patient safety practices in Korean hospitals and assess the differences in reporting and learning systems of patient safety, infrastructure, and safe practices by hospital characteristics. Methods: The authors developed a questionnaire including 39 items of patient safety staffing, health information system, reporting system, and event-specific prevention practices. The survey was conducted online or e-mail with 407 tertiary, general and specialty hospitals. Results: About 90% of hospitals answered the self-reporting system of patient safety related events is established. More than 90% of hospitals applied incidence monitoring or root cause analysis on healthcare-associated infection, in-facility pressure ulcers and falls, but only 60% did on surgery/procedure related events. More than 50% of the hospitals did not adopted present on admission (POA) indicators. One hundred (80.0%) hospitals had a department of patient safety and/or quality and only 52.8% of hospitals had a patient safety officer (PSO). While 82.4% of hospitals used electronic medical records (EMRs), only 53% of these hospitals adopted clinical decision support function. Infrastructure for patient safety except EMRs was well established in training, high-level and large hospitals. Most hospitals implemented prevention practices of adverse drug events, in-facility pressure ulcers and falls (94.4-100.0%). But prevention practices of surgery/procedure related events had relatively low adoption rate (59.2-92.8%). Majority of prevention practices for patient safety events were also implemented with a relatively modest increase in resources allocated. Conclusion: The hospital-based reporting and learning system, EMRs, and core evidence-based prevention practices were implemented well in high-level and large hospitals. But POA indicator and PSO were not adopted in more than half of surveyed hospitals and implementation of prevention practices for specific event had low. To support and monitor progress in hospital's patient safety effort, national-level safety practices set is needed.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.163-171
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• 2006

This study was performed to develop an analytical method in specified wastes for preventing the environmental pollution from hazardous wastes. Few analytical methods were developed using the waste standard reference materials of sludge, waste oil, bottom ash, etc. which contain As, CN, Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, and Hg compounds. The pre-treatment method was considered by whether or not the synchronous analysis is possible. Waste samples obtained from the 34 representative facilities, which are emitting the hazardous substances, were analyzed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.132-140
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• 2024

In the event of a severe accident in Sodium Cooled Fast Reactors (SFR), the sodium combustion aerosols along with fission product aerosols would migrate to the environment through leak paths of the Reactor Containment Building (RCB) concrete wall under positive pressure. Understanding the characteristics of sodium aerosol transport through concrete leak paths is important as it governs the environmental source term. In this context, experiments are conducted to study the influence of various parameters like pressure, initial mass concentration, leak path diameter, humidity etc., on the transport and deposition of sodium aerosols in straight leak paths of concrete. The leak paths in concrete specimens are prepared by casting and the diameter of the leak path is measured using thermography technique. Aerosol transport experiments are conducted to measure the transported and plugged aerosol mass in the leak paths and corresponding plugging times. The values of differential pressure, aerosol concentration and relative humidity taken for the study are in the ranges 10-15 kPa, 0.65-3.04 g/m³ and 30-90% respectively. These observations are numerically simulated using 1-Dimensional transport equation. The simulated values are compared with the experimental results and reasonable agreement among them is observed. From the safety assessment view of reactor, the approach presented here is conservative as it is with straight leak paths.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.584-588
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• 2016

The current study was carried out to investigate total and inorganic arsenic (As) concentrations in 112 rice samples (husked rice and polished rice) grown around the abandoned mining areas and to estimate the potential health risk through dietary intake of rice in Korea. Mean concentrations of total As in husked rice and polished rice were 0.23 and $0.13mg\;kg^{-1}$, respectively. Also, average inorganic As concentrations in husked rice and polished rice were 0.09 and $0.05mg\;kg^{-1}$, respectively. These levels are lower than the standard guideline value ($0.2mg\;kg^{-1}$) for inorganic As in polished rice recommended by Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and Codex. For health risk assessment, the average values of cancer risk probability was $5.7{\times}10^{-5}$ which was less than the acceptable cancer risk of $10^{-6}{\sim}10^{-4}$ for regulatory purpose. Also, hazard quotient values were lower than 1.0. Therefore, these results demonstrated that human exposure to inorganic As through dietary intake of rice collected from abandoned mining areas might not cause adverse health effects.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.19 no.4 s.68
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• pp.36-41
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• 2004

This paper presents an qualitative assessment for hazard on the electric power installations of a construction field using FMEL The power installations have the mission to maintain the highest level of service reliability on the works. The more capital the electric power invest the higher service reliability they plausibly will achieve. However, because of limited resources, how effectively budgets can be allocated to achieve service reliability as high as possible. The assessment typically generates recommendations for increasing component reliability, thus improving the power installation safety. The FMEA tabulates the failure modes of components and how their failure affects the power installations being considered. Tn order to estimate the risks of a failures, the FMEA presents criticality estimation or risk priority number using the severity, occurrence, and detectability. The results showed that the highest components of the risk priority number among components were condenser, transformer, MCCB and LA. And In case of the criticality estimation, the potential failure modes were abnormal temperature rise, insulation oil leakage, deterioration for the transformer, overcurrent for the MCCB and operation outage fir the LA.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.9-21
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• 2024

Static-electricity-induced fires and explosions persistently occur every year, averaging approximately 80 and 20 cases annually according to fire statistics provided by the National Fire Agency and industrial accident statistics provided by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, respectively. Despite the relatively low probabilities of these accidents, their potential risks are high. Consequently, effective risk assessment methodologies and accident investigation strategies are essential for efficiently managing static-electricity hazards in fire- and explosion-prone areas. Accordingly, this study aimed to identify the causal variables essential for accident investigations, thereby facilitating risk assessments and the implementation of effective recurrence prevention measures to mitigate static-electricity hazards in fire-and explosion-prone regions. To this end, industrial accident statistics recorded over the past decade (2012 to 2021) by the Ministry of Employment and Labor were analyzed to identify major fire and explosion incidents and related industrial accidents wherein static electricity was identified as a potential ignition source. Subsequently, relevant investigation reports (63 cases) were thoroughly analyzed. Based on the results of this analysis, existing electrostatic fire and explosion risk assessment techniques were refined and augmented. Moreover, factors essential for investigating electrostatic fire and explosion disasters were delineated, and the primary causal variables necessary for effective risk assessments and scientific investigations were derived.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1994.02a
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• pp.402-403
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• 1994

There are three different approaches to chemical risk assessment which will be considered in this paper. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) Cancer Risk Assessment includes some of the approaches used by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) effort is an evaluated database approach similar to that used in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Criteria Documents and in the documentations prepared by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for the Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs) and those of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) for the Threshold Limit Values (TLVs). A third approach is used by the Committee on Toxicology.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.1687-1690
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• 2009

It is important to safety culture in railway industry because they variously refer to the safety-related values, attitudes, beliefs, risk perceptions and behaviours of railway employees. So this study tried to figure out the assessment criteria for safety culture at Korean National Railway. For the achieve the goal, we have the literature review, some assessment criteria have been founded by intensively comparing safety culture questionnaires in other industries to establish domestic railway safety. This study expects Korean railways to become a well-organized that as assessing safety culture with reasonable criteria or requirements.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.633-640
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• 1997

Type R fire alarm is required intelligent buildings and height buildings which was based on automatic system. But in Korea, maintenance of fire alarm system is very poor. In this study, we developed assessment model for the type R fire alarm system which was assessed by using 96 checklist items. The assessment model was tested through the actual 4 buildings with type R fire alarm system. It is shown that present model can be applied for the assessment of all buildings through the examination of the suitability of assessment model by actual assessment. Also, it was made easily fire manager to carry out checklist for type R fire alarm system in buildings.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.106-106
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• 2018