PURPOSE: While there exist a good number of studies on Korean nurses who were dispatched to Germany in 1960s and 1970s in sociological or labor economic perspectives, there have been few studies on their experiences from a nursing perspective. The purpose of this study is to recapture their lives and experiences from a nursing point of view. METHODS: This paper adopts an Agar's ethnographic approach which is more suitable to investigate personal qualitative experiences of those Korean nurses. The data were collected from group discussion and individual interview, and field observation with 10 dispatched Korean nurses. RESULTS: The experiences of those dispatched nurses to Germany can be summarized into three themes: challenging to life, embracing new life, and giving a meaning to life. Challenging to life involved 'hope and anxiety,' and embracing new life was reflected by 'wonderment and envy' and 'loneliness and sorrow.' Lastly, they took pride in their contributions to their mother country and also felt something lacking that they had not been properly evaluated. CONCLUSION: By rediscovering their lives and experiences from a nursing perspective, this study argues for more future studies to reexamine their impact and contribution to the nursing field in Korea.
Anthropology, Cultural ; Germany ; Humans ; Korea ; Mothers

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This article aims to contribute to the literature on health and politics in the Philippines. So far, the wealth of studies on the intersection of these two in the local context has been mostly focused on issues of health sector reform and specific health policies or legislations. Unlike elsewhere, the use of health in elections in the Philippines, the most important political activity in any democracy, remains largely understudied. This article aimed to fill this gap by studying the ways health was used in the 2016 Philippines elections. It mapped the ways health was used as an electoral currency, meaning as a means for vote brokerages during local elections.

METHODOLOGY: The observations that informed this study were based on a political ethnographic study in Quezon City. In-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observations were conducted among voters and politicians of two vote-rich electoral districts in the city. The transcripts and notes from the data gathered were coded and thematically analyzed.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Voters and politicians use health as a means of transactional exchange of votes during focal elections-an electoral currency. Politicians use their control of public health facilities and services to secure votes while voters simultaneously use their vote as a leverage to gain access to these health facilities and services and improve its delivery in their communities. So while politicians use health to reinforce patron-client ties during elections, voters take advantage of its opportunities to improve their everyday life.

Leininger espoused that when studying cultures, researchers are likely to discover authentic and credible data when they are viewed by the participants as trusted friends. The Stranger to Trusted Friend Enabler was formulated to guide researchers in identifying indicators that a researcher has become the participants' trusted friend. This article presents my reflections on using Leininger's Stanger to Trusted Friend Enabler as a novice ethnonursing researcher. From my own experience, I have identified four hallmarks of a trusting relationship during fieldwork that correspond with the indicators of a trusting relationship identified by Leininger: (1) participants voluntarily share information about their culture and their personal experiences; (2) participants express concern for the researcher's welfare through their words and actions; (3) participants give the researcher a sense of community identity, such as a native name; and (4) participants suggest steps to further improve the trustworthiness of the study.

One of the limitations of the Stranger to Trusted Friend Enabler, however, is the fact that it only focuses on assessing the participants' trust towards the researcher. A successful ethnographic research requires mutual trust between the researcher and participants. From my experience in conducting an ethnonursing research, I have noted that aside from the participants' trust towards me, my trust towards them was also essential in obtaining rich and accurate data. Furthermore, the transition from being a stranger to a trusted friend is not a linear process in ethnonursing and in other types of ethnographic research. As a researcher transitions to become a trusted friend, he or she does not totally abandon his or her sense of alienation to the researched. The scientific nature of ethnography requires researchers to be a stranger and a trusted friend at the same time.

Due to poor preservation of human skeletons at most of archaeological sites, few specialists have carried out limited number of analysis of human bones and fossils in Korea. Worship of ancestor remains and poor development of bioarchaeology in the past may have prevented preservation and analysis of human bones. However, cases of extensive analysis with various methods, including DNA analysis, carbon isotope analysis, pathological analysis etc. have been increased very rapidly in recent years and make meaningful contribution to archaeological explanations of sites and ancient society. Development and rigorous application of various methodologies, in conjunction with related fields such as history and ethnography, to extensive analysis of human bone remains is highly recommendable even for the human remains excavated previously.
Anthropology, Cultural ; Carbon ; DNA ; Fossils ; Humans ; Korea ; Skeleton* ; Specialization

This study tried to the answer to the question : "How does the human communication happen between clinical nurse and patient?" To answer that, a micro-ethnographic research method was used and I performed field work at the orthopedic ward in one Korean metropolitan city. After analysis of interview data, observational data and field notes, I could understand that clinical nurse-patient communication performed for clinical decision making, providing patient education and emotional support. Prepared nurse communicate with patient more effectively, eventually can establish more trust relationship with patient. Conclusively I discussed about the way of nurse's skill acquisition, need of collaborative conference with doctor and nurse, and curriculum development to promote nurses's understanding of human.
Anthropology, Cultural ; Curriculum ; Decision Making ; Humans* ; Orthopedics ; Patient Education as Topic

PURPOSE: This study aimed to develop and evaluate a nursing educational program improving nursing professional's cultural competency in cancer prevention. METHODS: An eight-hour long educational program was developed based on several preliminary research projects, one ethnography and three quantitative projects, to identify the educational needs among nursing students and professionals in Korea. Thirty two nursing professionals were recruited for a one group pretest-posttest design. Three questionnaires were used to measure cultural nursing knowledge about cancer prevention, cultural competency and perceived importance of nurses' quality. RESULTS: After completing the educational program, the clinical nurses showed a significant change in the mean score of the cultural nursing knowledge about cancer prevention from 4.78±2.01 to 8.81±1.52 (t=-8.48, p<.001) and the level of the cultural competency from 72.47±8.96 to 83.59±8.61 (t=-6.16, p<.001). Clinical nurses' perception of 'Communication ability with patients and family members' changed from 6th to 2nd most importance but 'Having a passion for the patient care' remained the most important perceived factor of nurses' quality after completing the educational program. CONCLUSION: The educational program developed was effective in improving nursing professional's cultural competency in cancer prevention. However, it needs to be improved more to be culturally specific to multi-cultural clients.
Anthropology, Cultural ; Cultural Competency* ; Early Detection of Cancer ; Humans ; Korea ; Nursing ; Students, Nursing

The paper is to explore into how cultural hegemony had been established in modern China, focused on ideological debates and political conflicts between modernists and traditionalists. Relying upon historical, anthropological, and medicohistorical researches respectively by Paul Cohen, Judith Farquhar and Paul Unschuld, I criticize three research paradigms that had prevailed in modern Chinese history: (i) the 'Chinese response to Western impact' perspective fails to explain how Chinese Western medical practitioners founded their own independent organization; (ii) a dichotomy of 'tradition versus modernity' is, from an epistemological viewpoint, incompatible with an ontological view of illness shared between traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine; and (iii) while those Weberian social scientists tend to consider culture as the system of meanings and symbols, separated from their temporal and spatial matrix, they neglect political and historical spheres that are inevitably represented in cultural hegemony. My arguments are divided into two parts. The first part investigates that whereas Chinese modernists aggressively supported an immediate institutionalization of Western medicine for getting adapted to social Darwinian world, neotraditionalists tried to maintain medical identity through national essence backed up by Chinese civilization. In the second part, the paper illuminates how having emerged as a conceptual idea for moving beyond 'tradition versus modernity', 'state medicine' became popularized to solve public health problems in 1930s' rural China. In conclusion, cultural hegemonyyoriented debates that were seriously staged in the 1920s and 1930s between modernists and neo-traditionalists were transformed to "scientification of traditional Chinese medicine and popularization of Western medicine" a slogan proposed by Mao ZeDong.
Anthropology, Cultural/*history ; China ; *Culture ; History, 20th Century ; Philosophy, Medical/*history ; *Politics

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to describe how the rural elderly cope with experiences in multiple chronic diseases. METHOD: Data were collected through participant observation and in-depth interview using ethnography. The participants were 9 women and 2 men who aged over 65, were living in rural community, and had experienced two or more chronic diseases. RESULTS: According to the results of this study, those who had experienced multiple chronic diseases went through the stages of 'recognizing of revealed symptoms', 'discovering of disease', 'overcoming', 'neglecting', 'discovering another disease', 'being frustrated' and 'living with suffering'. CONCLUSION: The results of this study are expected to be utilized as basic materials to develop a nursing intervention program for effective management of chronic diseases.
Aged* ; Anthropology, Cultural ; Chronic Disease* ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Nursing ; Rural Population

This study was to find out the perception of toward death and caring behavior of lay parsons in one community : One Island in Pusan County, Chonbuk. The methodology of this study was ethnography. For this study, The fieldwork was conducted from October 1997 to July 1998. Data collected by in-depth interview and participant observations. The participants consisted of were 17 persons of both sexes. The key informants were four specific people. The result of this study is as follows; The people perceived two different kinds of death. Normal death, which means death from old age. The person was respected as an ancestor God and was believed to exist forever with their offspring. Abnormal death was regarded as negative, many had fears toward this king of death. The causes of abnormal death were supernatural phenomena and had absolute holy meanings. Whether death was good or bad, The death was not personal, but collective events as family or community affairs and was interpreted as death and birth for their offsprings. Funeral rites were family-centered and/or community-centered. The did normal procedures for normal deaths for abnormal deaths, there were many protective ceremonies(BuJungmagi : the prevention of the taboo of uncleanliness) for the remaining people. These ceremonies combined confucism and shamanism. Caring behavior for dying persons was ruled as community-centered, reciprocal and reality-centered principles.
Anthropology, Cultural ; Busan ; Funeral Rites ; Humans ; Jeollabuk-do ; Parturition ; Shamanism ; Taboo

PURPOSE: Increasing numbers of Koreans have immigrated to the United States since the late 1960s. The first generation of Korean immigrants or their parents become old and institutionalized in American nursing home setting. Although the Korean elders would experience many cultural differences in the nursing home, no study to date has investigated their everyday lives on how they live through their later lives within a different cultural environment from their own. METHODS: Using ethnographic methodology, the purpose of this paper was to illustrate Korean residents' experiences and daily lives in a nursing home located in an east coastal city in the U.S. Participant observation, filed notes, semi-structured interviews were utilized by means of data collection. Eighteen Korean residents were observed, and five of them and two nurses participated in informal qualitative interviews. RESULTS: The overriding theme from the findings is "thrown in a different world." Three sub-themes include "constant struggles in making themselves understood", "dealing with culturally inappropriate nursing care," and "maintaining their own ways of life". CONCLUSIONS: The discovered themes reflect culturally isolated lives of the participants and open a venue for designing a culturally congruent nursing care for Korean elders living in the U.S. nursing homes.
Aged* ; Anthropology, Cultural ; Data Collection ; Emigrants and Immigrants ; Humans ; Nursing Care ; Nursing Homes* ; Nursing* ; Parents ; United States