• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.85-90
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• 2001

In construction industries, the problem areas in safety are different to those of manufacturing. For instance, construction safety efforts must strongly emphasize fall prevention, whereas caught-in/ between incidents and electrical shocks are common in manufacturing. This paper reports an analysis of fall incidents that lead to fatalities in 1999 and in 2000. It also provides a safety plan for fall prevention by analyzing the origins of fall incidents by their trades and locations of concern. The findings of this study are expected to contribute toward reducing fall incidents in construction industry.

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.21-26
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• 2011

In 2001, an independent official board was constituted in Japan to investigate aircraft and railway accidents. In the past 10 years, many accidents and serious incidents have been investigated and these official reports were published by the board, on which the author had sat for 9 years as boarding member. In the interim, there were several train disasters which mocked our trust in railways and also many apparent trivial incidents. In recent years, serious incidents, which a door of running rail cars opens suddenly with some trouble, happen 2 or 3 times in a year. For the past 10 years, such incidents have happened 14 times and 13 cases of them were closed by the board mentioned above. In these 13 cases, no one fell off the rail car, so that the death toll was none luckily. In this paper, these 13 serious incidents are picked up among all the reports published by the board and outlined using some tables. Especially, fall accidents of passengers are discussed mainly from the view point of impact force and duration time. Then, the equation of HIC (Head Injury Criteria) and the risk curves in terms of the HIC are dealt with properly.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.252-265
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• 2015

Purpose: This study examined the circumstances, risk factors, and the predictors of fall incidents among patients in the small and medium-sized hospitals. Methods: Fifty patients with any fall experiences were matched by gender, age, and medical departments with 100 patients without fall incident at the same hospital. Data were collected from 5 small and medium-sized hospitals. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, a Chi-square test, a Fisher's exact test, and a logistic regression with the SPSS/WIN 21.0 program. Results: In the patients with falls, the largest number of falls occurred during the day shift, in the patients' rooms, and while they were walking. Further 74.0% of the patients had physical injuries, and 34.0% had to take further medical diagnostic tests. Significant differences were found between the patients with falls and the others on 14 variables (cardiovascular disease, anemia, sedative-hypnotics, vasodilators, narcotic analgesics, dizziness, general weakness, unstable gait, walking aids, anger, anxiety, depression, orientation, and fear of fall). Narcotic analgesic use, dizziness, walking aids, and cardiovascular disease were identified as the predictors of fall incidents. Conclusion: These findings are hoped to be used in developing a fall risk assessment tool and fall prevention nursing programs for small and medium-sized hospitals.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.161-169
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• 2024

This study employs Bayesian network analysis to quantitatively evaluate the risk of incidents in trap boats, utilizing accident compensation approval data spanning from 2018 to 2022. With a dataset comprising 1,635 incidents, the analysis reveals a mortality risk of approximately 0.011 across the entire trap boat. The study significantly identifies variations in incident risks contingent upon fishing area and fishing processes. Specifically, incidents are approximately 1.22 times more likely to occur in coastal compared to offshore, and the risk during fishing processes outweighs that during maintenance operations by a factor of approximately 23.20. Furthermore, a detailed examination of incident types reveals varying incidence rates. Trip/slip incidents, for instance, are approximately 1.36 times more prevalent than bump/hit incidents, 1.58 times more than stuck incidents, and a substantial 5.17 times more than fall incidents. The study concludes by providing inferred mortality risks for 16 distinct scenarios, incorporating fishing areas, processes, and incident types. This foundational data offers a tailored approach to risk mitigation, enabling proactive measures suited to specific circumstances and occurrence types in the trap boat industry.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.57-72
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• 2021

Purpose: At present, there are a variety of serious patient safety incidents related to problems in health information technology (HIT), specifically involving electronic medical records (EMRs). This emphasizes the need for an enhanced electronic medical record system (EMRS). As such, this study analyzed both the nature of and potential to prevent incidents associated with HIT/EMRS based on data from the Korea Patient Safety Reporting and Learning System (KOPS). Methods: This study analyzed patient safety incidents submitted to KOPS between August 2016 and December 2019. HIT keywords were used to extract HIT/EMRS incidents. Each case was reviewed to confirm whether the contributing factors were related to HIT/EMRS (HIT/EMRS-related incidents) and if the incident could have been prevented (HIT/EMRS-preventable incidents). The selected reports were summarized for general clarity (e.g., incident type, and degree of harm). Results: Of the 25,515 obtained reports, 2,664 incidents (10.4%) were HIT-related, while 2,525 (9.9%) were EMRS-related. HIT/EMRS-related incidents were the third largest type of incident followed by 'fall' and 'medication incidents.' More than 80% of HIT/EMRS-related incidents were medication-related, accounting for approximately one-third of the total number of medication incidents. Approximately 10% of HIT/EMRS-related incidents resulted in patient harm, with more than 94% of these deemed as preventable; further, sentinel events were wholly preventable. Conclusion: This study provides basic data for improving EMR use/safety standards based on real-world patient safety incidents. Such improvements entail the establishment of long-term plans, research, and incident analysis, thus ensuring a safe healthcare environment for patients and healthcare providers.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.34-48
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• 2019

Background: Fall-related injuries in older adults are a major health problem, and the risks and mechanisms of these injuries should be affected by race, culture, living environment, and/or economic status. Objects: Research articles have been systematically reviewed to understand fall-related injuries in older adults in South Korea. Methods: 128 published research papers have been found through the Korea Citation Index and the Korean Studies Information Service System, and reviewed in various perspectives, including incidents, fall death rates, medical costs, causes, injury sites and types, locations where falls occurred, prevention strategies, scholarly fields interested in fall injuries, and the role of physical therapy. Results: Fall-related injuries were found to be more common in women than in men, and the number of incidents increased with age, with the highest rate found in individuals over 85 years old. Risk of fall injury was associated with education level, comorbidities, and fear of falling. Common places where falls occurred included the bathroom, living room, stairs, and hallway. Common types of injury included bruises, fractures, and sprains in the lower extremities. Intervention strategies included exercise programs, education, and protective clothing. Scholarly fields interested in fall-related injuries in older adults included medicine, nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, physical education, pharmacology, oriental medicine, biomedical engineering, design, clothing, and textiles. Physical therapy intervention using proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation has been used to improve one's balance. Conclusion: Any movement during the activities of daily living can lead to a fall. Physical therapists are highly educated to analyze human movements and should be involved in more research and practices to solve fall-related injuries in older adults.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.79-89
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• 2018

In recent years, falls among elderly people have gained serious attention as a major cause of injuries. Falls often lead to fatal consequences due to lack of prompt response and rescue. Therefore, a more accurate fall detection system and an effective feature extraction technique are required to prevent and reduce the risk of such incidents. In this paper, we proposed an efficient feature extraction technique based on multiple sliding windows and validated it through a series of experiments using supervised learning algorithms. The experiments were conducted using the public datasets obtained from tri-axial accelerometers. The results depicted that extraction of the feature from adjacent sliding windows led to high accuracy in supervised machine learning-based fall detection. Also, the experiments conducted in this study suggested that the best accuracy can be achieved by keeping the window size as small as 2 seconds. With the kNN classifier and dataset from wearable sensors, the experiments achieved accuracy rates of 94%.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.252-259
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• 2023

Purpose: Falls are a common cause of unintentional injuries in infants. This study was conducted to examine the patterns of healthcare utilization following infant falls in South Korea. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study utilized an online survey designed to gather information regarding the general characteristics of parents and infants, fall-related variables, and healthcare use. Results: The most serious falls identified by parents occurred at an average infant age of 6.97 months. Most fall incidents took place indoors (95.7%), and many occurred under the supervision of caregivers (68.0%). Following the fall, 36.4% of the participants used healthcare services. Logistic regression analysis revealed that healthcare use following an infant fall was significantly associated with being a firstborn child (odds ratio [OR]=5.32, 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.19-15.28) and falling from a caregiver's arms (OR=4.22; 95% CI, 1.45-13.68). Conclusion: To prevent and decrease the frequency of infant falls, improvements are needed in both the domestic environment and parenting approaches.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.155-163
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• 2016

Objective: This study aims to draw the characteristics of occupational accidents occurred in cabling work, and assess accident severity based on occupational injury data. Background: Accident factors and accident risk are different by the place of work in cabling work. Field managers require information on accident prevention that can be easily understood by workers. However, there has been a lack of studies that focus on cabling work in Korea. Method: This study classifies 450 injured persons caused in cabling work by process, and analyzes the characteristics of occupational injuries from the aspects of age, work experience and accident type. This study also analyzes accident frequency and severity of injury. Results: Results show that preparing/finishing (33.3%) was the most common type of cabling process in injuries, followed by maintenance (28.4%), routing/income (23.1%) and wiring/installation (15.1%) process. The critical incidents in the level of risk management were falls from height in the routing/incoming process, and falls from height in the maintenance process. And, incidents ranked as 'High' level of risk management were slips and trips, fall from height and vehicle incident in the preparing/finishing process, and fall from height in the wiring/installation process. Conclusion and Application: The relative frequency of accident and its severity by working process serve as important information for accident prevention, and are critical for determining priorities in preventive measures.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.107-111
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• 2010

This paper provided a brief summary of the current strategic goals, activities, and impacts of the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) occupational injury research program. Three primary drivers (injury database, stakeholder input, and staff capacity) were used to define NIOSH research focuses to maximize relevance and impact of the NIOSH injury-prevention-research program. Injury data, strategic goals, program activities, and research impacts were presented with a focus on prevention of four leading causes of workplace injury and death in the US: motor vehicle incidents, falls, workplace violence, and machine and industrial vehicle incidents. This paper showcased selected priority goals, activities, and impacts of the NIOSH injury prevention program. The NIOSH contribution to the overall decrease in fatalities and injuries is reinforced by decreases in specific goal areas. There were also many intermediate outcomes that are on a direct path to preventing injuries, such as new safety regulations and standards, safer technology and products, and improved worker safety training. The outcomes serve as an excellent foundation to stimulate further research and worldwide partnership to address global workplace injury problems.