• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.218-232
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• 2013

Purpose: This study was aimed to describe Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) and analyze the flight nurses' activities in HEMS. Methods: Data were collected retrospectively from the air transportation reports that contained data of 168 patients transported by aircraft to G University medical center in Incheon since June, 2012 to March, 2013. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and Mann-Whitney U test. Results: Average distance of flights was 44.0 km, duration of field treatment took 13.6 minutes, and duration of a flight from scene to hospital was 14.5 minutes. Nursing activities were categorized into 12 direct nursing activities and 5 nursing management activities, and a total number of 7806 nursing activities were occurred in HEMS. The most frequently performed nursing activity was measurement and monitoring (27.9%) followed by medication (11.5%) and respiratory management (8.7%). The most frequent nursing management were information management (11.0%). Nursing activities performed were significantly different depending on the patient's level of consciousness, cause of illness, crew configuration, and type of transportation. Conclusion: This study described HEMS nursing activities performed by flight nurses. Difference in nursing activities according to patient characteristics, crew configuration and type of transportation requires flight nurses to be prepared through educational programs to improve nursing activities and nursing management during air transportation.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.19-30
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• 2021

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is one of common chronic diseases leading to severe health complications that may cause death. The disease influences individuals, community, and the government due to the continuous monitoring, lifelong commitment, and the cost of treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers Saudi Arabia as one of the top 10 countries in diabetes prevalence across the world. Since most of the medical services are provided by the government, the cost of the treatment in terms of hospitals and clinical visits and lab tests represents a real burden due to the large scale of the disease. The ability to predict the diabetic status of a patient without the laboratory tests by performing screening based on some personal features can lessen the health and economic burden caused by diabetes alone. The goal of this paper is to investigate the prediction of diabetic and prediabetic patients by considering factors other than the laboratory tests, as required by physicians in general. With the data obtained from local hospitals, medical records were processed to obtain a dataset that classified patients into three classes: diabetic, prediabetic, and non-diabetic. After applying three machine learning algorithms, we established good performance for accuracy, precision, and recall of the models on the dataset. Further analysis was performed on the data to identify important non-laboratory variables related to the patients for diabetes classification. The importance of five variables (gender, physical activity level, hypertension, BMI, and age) from the person's basic health data were investigated to find their contribution to the state of a patient being diabetic, prediabetic or normal. Our analysis presented great agreement with the risk factors of diabetes and prediabetes stated by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and other health institutions worldwide. We conclude that by performing class-specific analysis of the disease, important factors specific to Saudi population can be identified, whose management can result in controlling the disease. We also provide some recommendations learnt from this research.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.47-60
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• 2022

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the level of communication ability between paramedic students and patients in clinical practice. In addition, it was performed to produce essential data contributing to the qualitative improvement of communication ability. Methods: Data were collected from paramedic students with clinical experience after they provided online consent. Data collection was performed from June 3 to July 12, 2022. One hundred forty-seven questionnaires with 92 items were analyzed using SPSS statistics 28.0. Results: 57.1% of students took communication as a subject despite 92.5% of respondents saying that communication education is necessary for them. The average level of participant communication ability was 4.60 (±1.05) points (measured on a 7-point Likert scale). Among the subdivided communication ability levels, the highest level was demonstrated in the physical examination-related interview (5.36±0.96), and the lowest was shown in the completion part (3.93±1.51). Furthermore, a statistically significant difference was found in communication ability level according to school grade (F=4.709, p=.000). The highest correlation (r=.972, p<.001) was obtained between total communication ability and understanding the patient's point of view. Conclusion: Paramedic students should improve their communication skills to serve patients more effectively. Finally, more educational content should be developed on field-based situations in communication courses.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.652-665
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• 2023

Purpose: This study aimed to develop a nursing clinical judgment scale (NCJS) and verify its validity and reliability in assessing the clinical judgment of nurses. Methods: A preliminary instrument of the NCJS comprising 38 items was first developed from attributes and indicators derived from a literature review and an in-depth/focus interview with 12 clinical nurses. The preliminary tool was finalized after 7 experts conducted a content validity test based on a data from a preliminary survey of 30 hospital nurses in Korea. Data were collected from 443 ward, intensive care unit, emergency room nurses who voluntarily participated in the survey through offline and online for the verification of the construct validity and reliability of the scale. Results: The final scale comprised 23 items scored on a 5-point Likert scale. Six factors - integrated data analysis, evaluation and reflection on interventions, evidence on interventions, collaboration among health professionals, patient-centered nursing, and collaboration among nurse colleagues - accounted for 64.9% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the fit of the measurement model, comprising six factors (root mean square error of approximation = .07, standardized root mean square residual = .04, comparative fit index = .90). Cronbach's α for all the items was .92. Conclusion: The NCJS is a valid and reliable tool that fully reflects the characteristics of clinical practice, and it can be used effectively to evaluate the clinical judgment of Korean nurses. Future research should reflect the variables influencing clinical judgment and develop an action plan to improve it.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.35S no.2
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• pp.70-78
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• 1998

Spike detection in long-term EEG monitoring forepilepsy by wavelet transform(WT), artificial neural network(ANN) and the expert system is presented. First, a small set of wavelet coefficients is used to represent the characteristics of a singlechannel epileptic spikes and normal activities. In this stage, two parameters are also extracted from the relation between EEG activities before the spike event and EEG activities with the spike. then, three-layer feed-forward network employing the error back propagation algorithm is trained and tested using parameters obtained from the first stage. Spikes are identified in individual EEG channels by 16 identical neural networks. Finally, 16-channel expert system based on the context information of adjacent channels is introducedto yield more reliable results and reject artifacts. In this study, epileptic spikes and normal activities are selected from 32 patient's EEG in consensus among experts. The result showed that the WT reduced data input size and the preprocessed ANN had more accuracy than that of ANN with the same input size of raw data. Ina clinical test, our expert rule system was capable of rejecting artifacts commonly found in EEG recodings.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.199-211
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• 2020

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the essence and the meaning of nurses' experiences of end-of-life care (EOLC) for elderly patients in the long-term care hospitals (LTCHs). Methods: Data were gathered from 12 nurses who had been working at LTCHs in Korea through one-on-one interviews and the data were analyzed by Colaizzi's phenomenological method. Results: The emergent 5 themes were 'Doing the best for protecting patients' life', 'Providing a comfortable dying process for patients', 'Supporting a family's keeping on patient's death', 'Reflecting on life' and 'Desiring for the establishment of a humanity end-of-life care environment'. Conclusion: The end-of-life care for the elderly patients includes supporting elderly patients' comfortable dying process and helping the family keep the death of the elderly. The results indicated that physical facilities and end-of-life nursing capacity should be established in LTCHs for improving the quality of EOLC.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.205-218
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• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to learn the affective factors of case managers' occupational stress. Method: A total of 986 participants responded to a self-administered questionnaire that included 24 items of Korean Occupational Stress Questionnaire Short Form (KOSQSF), job satisfaction index, health behaviors, general characteristics, and variables related to work. The data collection of research was done from 17th to 21th of September, 2007. The data were analysed by t-test, ANOVA, and multiple regression with SPSS 11.1 package program. Result: The results of this study were as follows: The overall job satisfaction rate of men and women was highly than that of the Korean worker's standard. There were statistically significant differences in occupational stress in work place, work department, work position, smoking, treatment in out-patient clinic, subjective & relative health-status, work load, supervisor's review on work-ability, and job satisfaction. According to the multi-variate analysis, occupational stress(47.6%) was related to job satisfaction, workload, individual work-ability, supervisor's review on work-ability, health status and gender. Conclusion: Occupational stress varied depending on the ten variables and was influenced by job satisfaction(35.7%) and 5 other variables. The results suggest that further follow-up study on case managers is necessary to relieve their occupational stress.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.271-282
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• 2016

Purpose: This study was done to explore adaptation experience of living kidney donors after donation. Specific aims were to identify challenges donors face in the process of adaptation following surgery and how they interact with recipients and other people. Methods: Grounded theory methodology was utilized. Participants were 13 living kidney donors at six months or more after donation. Data were collected by in-depth interviews with individual participants. Data were analyzed using constants comparative method with theoretical saturation. Results: A core category emerged as 'keeping the fences of my family in spite of vulnerability'. The adaptation process after donation was manifested in four phases: exploration, balance, maintenance, and acclimatization. Phenomenon was perception of vulnerability. Strategies to manage the vulnerability were assessing changes of body awareness, tailoring regimen to one's own body condition, coping with health problems, keeping restoration of health, and ruminating on the meaning of one's kidney donation. Consequences were reestablishing family well-being, realizing the values of one's kidney donation, and living with uncertainty. Conclusion: Findings of the study indicate that there is a need for health professionals to understand the vulnerability of living kidney donors and help their family system maintain a healthy and productive life. The results of this study can be used to develop phase-specific, patient-centered, and tailored interventions for living kidney donors.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.11
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• pp.276-279
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• 1997

A simple bio-feedback system was developed to monitor and to analyze patient's postural balance. Two load celIs were used to measure the weight of each side. A specially designed electronic circuit was made to pick up the weight signals and to feed into the data acquisition system. Clinical trials were also made on 20-30 year-old normal subjects and nine hemiplegia patients who had the potential instability in weight bearing. A Microsoft window-based software collected and analyzed the postural balance data. Normal subjects showed only 5% deviations of their body weight. However, hemipegic patients had significant weight shifts toward the healthy limb. With the present system, patients can also exercise their balance and weight bearing. The present system should be of convenience to monitor in real-time and analyze the postural balance control of hemiplegic patients.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify nurses' perceptions on the older adult's dignity, and identify the risk factors that threaten older adult dignity and nurses' experiences of ethically difficult care in nursing homes. Method: Qualitative content analysis was done using an analysis scheme developed by the investigators. The data were collected from 51 nurses in 10 different nursing homes, who have agreed this study. Using a self-completion questionnaire was developed by the authors. The questionnaire which consisted of 3 items about dignity definitions, risk factors, and experiences on ethical dilemma. Results: The scheme consisted of 14 categories and 33 subcategories of the 261 significant statements. The categories of the dignity perception analyzed were respect, social right and equality. The categories of risk factors analyzed were loss of control, abuse, physical restraint, invasion of privacy, decision limitation and staff qualification. The categories of dignity experiences were abuse, physical restraint, invasion of privacy, staff qualification and decision limitation. Conclusions: This study may suggests interpretation for compromised older adult's dignity and provides data to use in the development of the useful guidelines and educational programs for the nurses in nursing homes.