• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.330-341
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• 2015

Objectives: Emergency medical personnel (EMPs) are pre-hospital emergency responders who are at risk of exposure to infections and may also serve as a source for the transmission of infections. However, few studies of infection control have specifically addressed EMPs in the Republic of Korea (hereafter Korea). The goal of this study was to assess the current status of infection prevention and control programs (IPCPs) for EMPs in Korea. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted to quantitatively assess the resources and activities of IPCPs. A total of 907 EMPs in five metropolitan cities completed a structured questionnaire from September 2014 to January 2015. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, multi-response analysis, and the chi-square test. Results: The mean age of the participants was $34.8{\pm}15.1years$. IPCPs were found to have weaknesses with regard to the following resources: the assignment of infection control personnel (ICP) (79.5%), hand hygiene resources such as waterless antiseptics (79.3%), the use of paper towels (38.9%), personal protective equipment such as face shields (46.9%), and safety containers for sharps and a separated space for the disposal of infectious waste (10.1%). Likewise, the following activities were found to be inadequately incorporated into the workflow of EMPs: education about infection control (77.5%), post-exposure management (35.9%), and the decontamination of items and spaces after use (88.4%). ICP were found to have a significant effect on the resources and activities of IPCPs (p<0.001). The resources and activities of IPCPs were found to be significantly different among the five cities (p<0.001). Conclusions: IPCPs for EMPs showed some limitations in their resources and activities. IPCPs should be actively supported, and specific IPCP activities for EMPs should be developed.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.59-68
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• 2016

Purpose: Increase in suicide rate for senior citizens which has become widespread in our society today. It is not a normal social phenomenon and is beyond the danger level. The contents of this study include Korean senior citizens' suicide related risk factors and warning signs, and the development of a simple Geriatric Suicide Risk Scale. Methods: This study is Methodological Research to verify reliability and validity of the Geriatric Suicide Risk Scale according to the tool development process suggested by Devellis (2012). Results: For predictive validity assessment, high suicide screening accuracy was showed with an Area under the ROC curve (AUC) of .93. For the optimal cutoff point of 11, sensitivity was 93.9%, and specificity, 75.7% which are excellence levels. Cross validity for assessment of generalization possibility showed the Area under the ROC curve (AUC) as .82 and in case of a cutoff point of 11, sensitivity was 73.7%, and specificity, 65.9%. Conclusion: When it comes to practical nursing, it is significant that the Korean Geriatric Suicide Risk Scale has high reliability and validity through adequate tool development and the tool assessment step to select degree of suicide risk of senior citizens. Also, it can be easily applied and does not take a long time to administer. Further, it can be used by health care personnel or the general public.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.40-52
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• 2015

Background: The purpose of this study was to analyze the increase in Grade of Nursing Management Fee of medical institutions and establish a reasonable government policy by examining which factors affect the increase of nurse staffing. Methods: Analyzing data collected from the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service resource management department with targets of 1,104 medical institutions. The study period was 5 years from June 30, 2008 to June 30, 2013. SAS ver. 9.2 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA) was used for statistical analysis. The data was analyzed by a chi-square test and also conducted muiltivariate logistic regression analyses for variables of basic characteristics, human resource characteristics, and material resources. Results: Adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of the rise in Grade of Nursing Management Fee among other hospitals compared to hospitals owned by government or universities was 0.264. The AOR in hospitals established after November 2006 compared to those before June 1995 was 2.383. The AOR in Gangwon, Chungcheng South, and Jeolla South Provinces compared to Seoul was 0.084, 0.036, and 0.194, respectively. The AOR in hospitals with more than 6.75 specialists per 100 beds compared to those with less than 6.75 specialists per 100 beds was 7.514. The AOR in hospitals with more than 17.48 nurse per 100 beds compared to those with less than 17.48 nurse per 100 beds was 3.300. The AOR in hospitals with 50% to 75% bed utilization, 75% to 90% bed utilization and more than 90% bed utilization compared to those with less than 50% bed utilization was 5.428, 9.884, and 10.699, respectively. The AOR in hospitals with one magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and more than two MRI compared to those with no MRI was 2.018 and 2.942, respectively. Conclusion: This result has showed policies to induce the rise in Grade of Nursing Management Fee among old hospitals and the incentive system for local medical institutions are needed. Also we need to develop a governmental policy for medium-small hospitals with low operation rate of beds and insufficient medical personnel and number of equipment in hospitals.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.472-484
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• 1995

The purpose of this study was to develop a home health care model in the public health system and to test the effectiveness of the model. Seven com-munity health practitioners in Yon- Cheon county. Kyunggi province, carried out home health care service for this research. The subjects of the home health care were a total of 111 community residents with chronic health problems and risk-prone infants and children; 29 persons with hypertension, 18 persons with diabetes, 12 persons with neurologic problems, 12 elderly, and 40 infants and children. During the period of study, from December, 1993 to March, 1995, a demonstrative home health care model was developed in the Yon-Cheon County community health centers with the cooperation of the Yon-Cheon Medical Center and Yon-Cheon Public Health Center for the first six months. A home care practice manual and recording system for home visits were also co-developed by the researchers and community health practitioners. Four workshops and monthly conferences were held for this purpose. Actual home care practice took place for two months, and on-going evaluation and replanning accompanied this process. The result of the evaluation of home care service were as follows. 1) For persons with hypertension, diabetes, neurologic problems, there was significant improvement in knowledge of disease and care, but no significant difference was seen in health behavior or symptoms after home care service. 2) No significant difference was seen in level of self esteem or depression after reminiscence therapy among 12 elderly subjects. 3) There were significant differences in satis-faction toward child rearing and parental sup-port, but no significant difference In education needs for parental role after home care service among parents of infants and children. 4) There was significant improvement in the quality of life among the subjects after the home care service. 5) Subjects responded that they were highly satisfied with the home care service given by the community health practitioners. Although, the actual implementation period was very short, and not all of the evaluation outcomes showed significant improvement, the home health care model of community health practitioners was, in general, positively evaluated. Through this re-search, the possibility of community health practitioners working as active home care personnel in the public health care system is supported. Further research with an expanded area and subjects for a longer period is recommended. Cost effectiveness research is also needed.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.1475-1487
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to understand the experience of nurses working in public health centers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify its essence. The subjects who had worked for more than one year during the period of COVID-19 pandemic in three county health centers in C province were selected as research participants and analyzed according to the phenomenological method proposed by Colaizzi. As a result of the study, three themes were derived: Negative feelings about COVID-19, A firm sense of professional calling, Leading the way in preparing a system to respond to new infectious diseases. Based on this, it was confirmed that it is necessary to strengthen psychological problem support for nurses, improve biased work, support professional manpower, support systematic education, and prepare appropriate compensation system. Therefore, based on the results of this study, active discussions should be made with various interests in order to establish a support system for nurses who are major personnel in the health care system and to prepare an effective infectious disease response strategy.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.28-38
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• 2019

Objectives: We searched and reviewed the literature including the laws or acts, statistics, guidelines, papers and conference proceedings related to home visit nursing care in South Korea. Method: We searched and reviewed the literature including the laws or acts, statistics, guidelines, papers and conference proceedings related to home visit nursing care in Korea. Results: There are three types of home care nursing in Korea. Public health center provides home visit nursing to vulnerable population by registered nurses for free, based on community health act in public health center. As of 2017, 1,261,208 people were enrolled in the visiting health program of public health center. Health behavior and disease management has been improved and showed having cost-benefit effect among the enrolled people in visiting health program. Visiting nursing care in long-term care services is provided by registered nurses or nurse aid, based on long-term care act. The cost is paid as the unit price according to service time. 1,095,764 older people used long-term care services in 2017, only 0.2% of total cost used for home visiting nursing. Even though the number of user of home visiting nursing, it was reported that users spent less medical cost and hospitalized shorter. Hospital-based home care nursing is provided to patients and their families under the prescription of a doctor by family nurse specialists who are employed by medical institute based on medical law. Four hundred sixty family nurse specialists worked for hospital-based home care nursing and hospital-based home care services accounted for 0.038% of total medical expenses in 2017. Conclusion: Even though home visit nursing care services are different in aspect of legal basis, personnel, running institutes, and cost basis, home visit nursing care showed cost-benefit effect and good health outcomes. In order to advance home visit nursing care, the integrated home visiting care, improvement of working condition, and revision of legal basis should be considered.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.58-69
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• 1994

In order to see the development of Nursing related research activities in Korea over the last three decades, abstracts of almost all of the Master and Ph.D theses that appeared from 1961 up to August 1991 were collected. The number of theses was 2354, from which an index of key words has been constructed. Key words were defined as those terms in each thesis title that convey major objectives of the given thesis study and the important nursing concepts dealt with in the thesis. Although all the key words were picked from the thesis title only, full use was made of the abstracts in deciding the principal objectives and essential contents of the thesis studies and their important concepts as well. In total, 539 kinds of key words were identified from the 2354 titles, and the identified words were all found to be in the International Nursing Index. On an average each title has two key words. Which key words were most frequently used, how they have changed with time, what kind of concept is preferably dealt with by each graduate school, and the concepts to which a given key word is likely to be connected were examined. The results are summerized below : 1) For each decade the theses numbers were as follows : 54(2.3%) from the 60’s, 413(17.5%) from the 70’s, 1523(64.7%) from the 80’s, and 364(15.5%) from the 90’s. Master’s thesis contributed 96% (2252) of the papers and Ph. D’s theses filled the remaining 4%(102). 2) A total of 539 key words were used, averaging about 2 for each thesis. The most frequently used key words were ‘Nurse’, ‘Anxiety’, ‘Knowledge / Attitude /Practice’, ‘Stress /Stressor’, ‘Attitude’, ‘Job-Satisfaction’, ‘Mental Disorder’, ‘Operation’, ‘Elderly’, ‘Nursing Role’. 3) Each decades key words can be classified as : the 60’s : ‘Nursing Education’, ‘Pulmonary Tuberculosis’, ‘Mother-Child Health’, ‘Growth & Development’, ‘Public Facilities’, ‘Mental Disorder’ : the 70’s : ‘Nurse’, ‘Family Planning’, ‘Attitude’ / ‘Knowledge, Attitude / Practice’, ‘Curriculum in Nursing Education’, ‘Clinical Practice in Nursing’, ‘Analysis of the Work of the Nurse’, ‘Health Education of School’, : the 80’s : ‘Nurse’, ‘Anxiety’, ‘Stress /Stressor’, ‘Operation’, ‘Nursing Role’, ‘Job Satisfaction’ : the 90’s : ‘Nurse’, ‘Elderly’, ‘Family-Support’, ‘Stress /Stressor’, ‘Home Care’. Key word ‘Nurse’ appears continuously and most frequently through the years, which indicates that there has been active study of the characteristics of nurses and related fields. The concept ‘Anxiety’ has been studied steadly from the 80’s and it shows that interest in health and disease are increasing Which comes as a result of society changing to an industrial and informational community. 4) Looking into each graduate school’s study area key words ‘Anxiety’, ‘Nurse’, ‘Mental Disorder’, ‘Stress /Stressor’, ‘Operation’, ‘Attitude’, ‘Hemo-dialysis’, were studied in the regular graduate school : ‘Family Planning /Contraception’, ‘Knowledge / Attitude /Practice’, ‘Physical Health-State /Physical Health Examination’, ‘Nurse’, ‘Using Clinical Facilities’, ‘Health Education of School’, were studied in the Graduate School of Public Health’ ; ‘Nurse’, ‘Anxiety’, ‘Stress / Stressor’, ‘Job-Satisfaction’, ‘Clinical Practice Education’, ‘Nursing Education’, were studied in the Graduate School of Education : ‘Nurse’, ‘Job Satisfaction’, ‘Nursing Role’, ‘Administration - Employment /Employment Management’, ‘Leadership’, ‘Personnel Profile’, ‘Nursing Manpower / Changing Working Place’, were studied in the Graduate School of Public Administration. 5) The Connection between key words were : ‘Nurse Job Satisfaction’, ‘Stress / Stressor ⇔ Coping / Ajustment’, ‘Nurse ⇔ Nursing Role’, ‘Anxiety ⇔ Giving Information’, ‘Nurse ⇔ Stress / Stressor’, ‘Anxiety ⇔ Operation’, ‘Nurse ⇔ Burnout’, ‘Knowledge, Attitude, Practice ⇔ Family Planning’, ‘Nurse Administration ⇔ Employment’, ‘Anxiety Muscle ⇔ Relaxation Technic’, ‘Anxiety ⇔ Mental Disorder’. From the above it can be noted that many nursing concepts were handled in the thesis titles. But there were more than enough papers on the characteristics of the nurse. It is suggested that in depth research be made on ‘Nursing Accidents’, t-‘Ethics’, ‘Nurse - Patient Interactions’, ‘Spritual Care’, ‘Dying’, ‘Hospice’, ‘Resident Helper’ and that there should be in depth research relating to the physical and mental development of youth and in particular physical concepts like ‘Drug - Abuse’, ‘Child -Abuse and Teaching’.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.32-45
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• 1992

An important role of community health nurses in health centers is to solve community health problems found through data collection methodology which has been used to identify the health needs of the community, diagnose the health problems and to plan health programs suitable for the health problems. Also community health nurses must be prepared to know the community health needs and to participate in the planning process. Since 1956 when the health center law was established, community health nurses have really implemented only the services which the government has asked them to do. This has kept them busy enough. But these days as society is in rapid change, community health nurses should have the flexibility to deal with the social change and demands that are unique to their community each which has different health needs and demands. So community health nurses need to identify what community health problems exist in their particular communities. The purposes of this study were as follows. 1) To explore the suitability of the health programs which the government has asked the community health nurses to do for their own communities and if these programs are not suitable, to explore the reasons why. 2) To explore the degree to which the community health nurses have the ability to identify health problems in their own communities and activate the community diagnostic process. 3) To identify the degree that the community health nurses have the ability to implement plans related to community diagnosis. 4) To find out how much data related to community health problems, the community health nurses have and how they are utilizing it. 5) To measure the community health nurses self-confidence concerning diagnostic activities for community health. The study subjects were 454 Community Health Nurses working in Health Centers in Seoul, Korea. The period of data collection was 6 days(Nov. 9th 1991-Nov. 15th 1991). A questionnaire used for data collection was composed of three different items; general characteristics, community health diagnostic activities and self-confidence in performing diagnostic activities. The results of the study are as follows. First, over one third of the respondents replied that the government required activities for their communities are not appropriate. Of these activities the most frequent reply $(51.2\%)$ indicated that many of the activities in the community were inappropriate to the actual situation. Further, $25\%$ of the replies indicated that many activities were only administratively oriented and as such not appropriate. Second, $49.8\%$ of the respondents replied that they had done general assessments and had a general idea of the health problems of their community. Effective solutions to health problems could be found with an increase in health personnel and management ability according to $41.5\%$ of the respondents. Third, to the question as to whether they had ever independently implemented a plan towards solving community diagnosed problems, $52\%$ of nurses replied 'never', $40\%$ 'occasionally' but only $7.5\%$ replied that they did it frequently. Actually there was very little done even in the basic work of collecting the necessary data. Fourth, when asked how much of basic information they had collected that might be used in community diagnosis activity, of 26 items in 5 areas, there was hardly one for which complete data had been collected. Fifteen percent did have data on the geographical aspects of their area, housing distribution and types of housing, while $17.8\%$ knew the frequency with which the health center was used. Concerning community resources, even with a list of community resources, only $12.3\%$ had data on any of these resources, and this data was incomplete. Further, information about social work institutions, and facilities was also incomplete, only $14.2\%$ of the respondents had any data and even it was incomplete; that is, in general, the nurses did not have this information. Fifth, concerning the confidence of the community health nurse in their ability to carry out community diagnoses activities, $60\%$ replied that they were very or at least nominally confident, indicating that although they were not doing community diagnostic activities they felt they could do so, as they were carrying out home visits and program planning as part of their official duties. The following recommendations are made based on the results of this study. First; since the community health nurses have a high perception of the need for community diagnostic activities and. high confidence in their ability to carry out this activity and high percentage of respondents replied that with a little training they could do this even better it is recommended that community diagnostic activity training be included in the continuing education program for community health nurses. Second, in order for the Community Health Nurses to successfully solve the health problems of their respective community they reported to a need to increase the number of health personnel, improve the facilities and the system of managing their work. Considering this, it is recommended that ways be sought to remedy these deficits.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.385-392
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to identify the degree of medical inequality in medical vulnerable areas, especially in the southwestern islands, and to prepare improvements. As a research method, 14 pieces were analyzed by systematic literature review with keywords such as 'medical vulnerability', 'medical inequality', and 'island area', and a focus group or in-depth interview (FGI) was conducted on 9 medical personnel in the public medical delivery system to identify the current status and demand. As a result of the study, medical inequality in the southwest region, especially in island areas, was confirmed, and the lack of professional manpower and administrative support system were confirmed through FGI. As a result of the study, it was confirmed that realistic measures should be prepared to increase the efficiency of public health care as well as active administrative support to improve the vulnerability of island areas.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.97-119
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• 1991

Korea has made a rapid economic development since the last three decades. This has helped Korea narrow the gap in health service differences in resource availability and in quality of care. However urban and rural differentials are still remarkable. This study has maintained that health status of rural residents is inferior to that of urban dwellers. Therefore, this study was carried out to develop policy measures for improving health services in rural areas. In order to achieve the objective of this study the authors collaborated closely and made field visits, interviews and conducted an extensive literature review regarding rural health services. The following policy options are recommended as a summary ; First, the quality of rural health personnel is a single most important factor influencing the level of rural health services. An innovative program for public health doctors to the internship and/or residency training program such as specialty board program of family medicine. Second, dissatisfaction regarding employment of public health doctors is problematic. More rational employment and deployment programs are needed to meet their personal desire. One way to do this is to make it wide open and competitive. Third this study shows how to increase physician productivity in the rural public health sector. Incentive system needs to be elaborated for the career development of rural health workers. University linked job opportunity as clinical professor is an example. Fourth, without straightening the function of health centers and subcenters, the future of rural health services is doomed to failure. Straightening primary health care is one way to enrich the program of public health facilities and reactivating the operation of health center/hospital is another. A close linkage of public facilities with private hospitals is a minimum requirement for the operation of health delivery system within a health district. Fifth, some measures are urgently required to enhance hospital services in medically underserved areas. Financial subsidy, tax exemption, long-term public loans and higher priority of health manpower deployment are some of them. Sixth, new health programs should be in tiated to meet changing needs of peoples in rural areas. Home health care program, hospice program, nursing home, residential program for the elderly are recommended.