Purpose: This study evaluated the validity and reliability of the Korean version of the Face Mask Use Scale (K-FMUS) among community-dwelling adults. Methods: The participants of the study were community-dwelling adults in Korea using face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. The English FMUS was translated into Korean using forward and backward translation procedures. The construct validity and reliability of the K-FMUS were evaluated using the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and the internal consistency reliability test. Results: The K-FMUS comprised 6 items divided into 2 factors. The variance of the factors was approximately 79.1%, which suggested that the scale indicated the effectiveness of face mask usage. The two factors were labeled as face mask use in society (4 items) and face mask use at home (2 items). Cronbach’s α value for the overall scale was .88. Conclusion The K-FMUS is a valid and reliable scale that can be used to measure face mask usage among community-dwelling adults in Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the actual situation of mask wearing by adults in the early stages of the coronavirus epidemic and to identify factors that influence the transition to mask wearing and establish a management plan for more effective infectious disease prevention. Methods: This study was a multinational study conducted in ten countries. Data collected in Korea were analyzed. Adults over the age of 18 in the Seoul and Gyeonggi areas were targeted, and data for 657 adults were analyzed. Results: The average score for mask-wearing compliance was 16.25, ranging from 0 to 24. There was a significant positive correlation between anxiety and depression, as well as anxiety and mask-wearing compliance. There was a significant negative correlation between depression and mask-wearing compliance. Multiple linear regression revealed that mask-wearing compliance was predicted by levels of the anxiety, depression, and education. These explanatory variables explaining the dependent variable mask-wearing compliance was 12%. Conclusion To identify and improve factors influencing mask-wearing compliance, general characteristics including educational background of participants were identified. Psychosocial factors such as anxiety and depression should also be considered. In addition, as the level of anxiety and depression will differ for each person, differentiated interventions according to psychological state should be provided.

Purpose: High-quality nursing care must be provided for women with infertility, and their nursing care needs must be identified. Although scales have been developed to assess infertility-related stress, quality of life, and psychosocial status, there is a lack of scales that assess the nursing care needs of women with infertility. The purpose of this study was to develop a needs assessment scale for nursing care in women with infertility and to verify its reliability and validity. Methods: The 250 subjects in this study were women with infertility recruited from four hospitals. The scale was developed following the framework of DeVellis, through a literature review, in-depth interviews, development of preliminary items, verification of content validity, development of secondary items, verification of construct validity, and extraction of the final items. Date were analyzed using item analysis, factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Pearson correlation coefficients, and Cronbach’s alpha. Reliability was tested using Cronbach’s alpha, and validity was evaluated using item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and criterion validity. Results: The final version of the nursing care needs assessment scale for woman with infertility consisted of 18 items. Four factors (physical and psychological nursing care needs, needs for information regarding treatment, needs for infertility-related understanding and concern, and supportive needs) explained 66.0% of the total variance. Cronbach’s alpha was .92 for the overall instrument and ranged from .88 to .91 for the subscales. Conclusion These results suggest that this needs assessment scale for nursing care in women with infertility demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability and contained items suitable for assessing the level of nursing care needed by women with infertility.

PURPOSE: To develop nurses' educational needs scale for woman with infertility. METHODS: A total of 201 nurses in charge of infertility health services in 4 infertility hospitals and 1 public health center were enrolled for this study. The scale was developed through literature review, in-depth interview, development of preliminary items, verification of content validity, development of secondary items, verification of construct validity, and extraction of final items. Data were analyzed using item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and Cronbach's α. RESULTS: Nurses' educational needs scale for women with infertility consisted of 41 items. Three factors (education for disease and symptom of infertility, supporting and counselling for infertility patients, and education for daily life of infertile patients) explained 63.7% of the total variance. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses' educational needs scale for woman with infertility demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability. Its items could be used to assess the level of educational needs for nurses in charge of infertility health services.
Education ; Female ; Health Services ; Humans ; Infertility ; Needs Assessment ; Public Health ; Reproducibility of Results

PURPOSE: The purposes of this study were to develop a scale to measure the grit for nurses and to examine the validity and reliability of the scale. METHODS: Through a literature review and focus group interviews, 28 preliminary items were selected. After a content validity examination by experts, 35 items were chosen. The questionnaire survey for this study was conducted with 330 nurses from five hospitals in A city in Korea. Among them, 305 met the inclusion criteria for analyses. RESULTS: From the exploratory factor analysis to determine validity, three factors were drawn. The variance explanation by the three factors was 56.62%, which means that the scale explained grit in clinical nurses. The three factors were labeled as ‘sustained persistence’ (5 items), ‘consistency of interest as a nursing professional’ (5 items), and ‘Patient oriented intrinsic motivation’ (4 items). The grit for criterion-related validity showed that the correlation coefficient was .53 (p<.001), validating the developed scale. For internal consistency, Cronbach's α coefficient was .91. CONCLUSION Through the development process for the instrument as described above, the clinical nurses' grit was shown to have validity and reliability. Improving the grit of clinical nurses may contribute to prevention of turnover.

Background and Objectives: Thyrohyoid syndrome is rare disease characterized by unilateral chronic neck pain on hyoid bone area. Currently, local triamcinolone injection was widely used, but oral steroid treatment was rarely tried. We compared the oral steroid and triamcinolone injection for the thyrohyoid syndrome. Subjects and Method Patients who had unilateral pain and tenderness at thyrohyoid membrane were enrolled while excluding those with other diseases, such as gastroesophageal reflux, by physical exam and history taking. Patients were treated with oral steroid (n=15) and local triamcinolone injection (n=11); pain scores based on the pretreatment and post-treatment numeric rating scale (NRS)-11 were compared between the groups. Results: Patients with thyrohyoid syndrome were comorbid with globus (42.3%), sore throat (19.2%), and radiating pain (15.4%). In the oral steroid group, posttreatment pain scores (4.0± 2.2) significantly improved (p=0.001) more than pretreatment pain scores (7.7±1.2). In the triamcinolone injection group, posttreatment pain scores (2.3±1.7) also significantly improved (p=0.003) more than pretreatment scores (7.5±1.4). None of the patients revealed treatment related complications. Pretreatment scores were not significantly different, but post-treatment scores wre significantly better in the triamcinolone injection group than in the oral steroid group (p=0.047). Conclusion Oral steroid treatment could be easily performed and have significant effects for patients with thyrohyoid syndrome. Local triamcinolone injection was more effective than oral steroid treatment.

Cortical lesions of the supplementary motor area (SMA) are important in balance control and postural recovery in stroke patients, while the role of subcortical lesions of the SMA has not been studied. This study aimed to investigate the subcortical projections of the SMA and its relationship with ataxia in supratentorial stroke patients. Thirty-three patients with hemiparesis were divided into 3 groups (severe ataxia, n = 9; mild to moderate ataxia, n = 13; no ataxia, n = 11). Ataxia severity was assessed using the Scale for Ataxia Rating Assessment. Diffusion tensor imaging analysis used the fractional anisotropy (FA) values and tract volume as parameters of white matter tract degeneration. The FA values of regions related to ataxia were analyzed, that is the SMA, posterior limb of the internal capsule, basal ganglia, superior cerebellar peduncle, middle cerebellar peduncle, inferior cerebellar peduncle, and cerebellum. Tract volumes of the corticostriatal tract and cortico-ponto-cerebellar (CPC) tract originating from the SMA were evaluated. There were significant differences among the 3 groups in FA values of the subcortical regions of the CPC tract. Furthermore, the volume of the CPC tract originating from the SMA showed significant negative correlation with ataxia severity. There was no correlation between ataxia and corticostriatal tract volume. Therefore, we found that subcortical lesions of the CPC tract originating from the SMA could contribute to ataxia severity in stroke patients with ataxic hemiparesis.

We hypothesized that lower proportion of serum phospholipid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is inversely associated with increased cardiovascular risk and vascular function in metabolically healthy men. To elucidate it, we first compared serum phospholipid free fatty acid (FA) compositions and cardiovascular risk parameters between healthy men (n = 499) and male patients with coronary artery disease (CAD, n = 111) (30-69 years) without metabolic syndrome, and then further-analyzed the association of serum phospholipid DHA composition with arterial stiffness expressed by brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (ba-PWV) in metabolically healthy men. Basic parameters, lipid profiles, fasting glycemic status, adiponectin, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and LDL particle size, and serum phospholipid FA compositions were significantly different between the two subject groups. Serum phospholipid DHA was highly correlated with most of long-chain FAs. Metabolically healthy men were subdivided into tertile groups according to serum phospholipid DHA proportion: lower (< 2.061%), middle (2.061%-3.235%) and higher (> 3.235%). Fasting glucose, insulin resistance, hs-CRP and ba-PWVs were significantly higher and adiponectin and LDL particle size were significantly lower in the lower-DHA group than the higher-DHA group after adjusted for confounding factors. In metabolically healthy men, multiple stepwise regression analysis revealed that serum phospholipid DHA mainly contributed to arterial stiffness (β'-coefficients = -0.127, p = 0.006) together with age, systolic blood pressure, triglyceride (r = 0.548, p = 0.023). Lower proportion of serum phospholipid DHA was associated with increased cardiovascular risk and arterial stiffness in metabolically healthy men. It suggests that maintaining higher proportion of serum phospholipid DHA may be beneficial for reducing cardiovascular risk including arterial stiffness in metabolically healthy men.
Adiponectin ; Blood Pressure ; C-Reactive Protein ; Coronary Artery Disease ; Fasting ; Glucose ; Humans ; Insulin Resistance ; Male ; Particle Size ; Pulse Wave Analysis ; Triglycerides ; Vascular Stiffness*

BACKGROUND: Although the prevalence of e-cigarette smoking is increasing worldwide, the harmfulness of e-cigarette is not obvious. A previous study reported that e-cigarette smoking is associated with depressive symptoms in college students irrespective of tobacco smoking. However, there has been no research that has addressed this issue in the general population to date. This study was conducted to clarify the association between e-cigarette smoking and depressive symptoms in Korean adults.METHODS: The cross-sectional study collected raw data from the 7th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2016) and included 5,742 adults, who were ≥19 years and responded to the survey of smoking and mental health section. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine the odds ratio of depressive symptoms by e-cigarette smoking experience and included sex, age, educational level, marital status, household income level, self-rated health, activity restriction, obesity, tobacco smoking experience, alcohol drinking experience, and stress perception level as covariates. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the patient health questionnaire-9, Korean edition.RESULTS: The rate of depressive symptoms in subjects was 5.6% (n=354) in total. Individuals with depressive symptoms were more likely to have used e-cigarettes (15.6%) than those without depressive symptoms (8.6%; P=0.001). The e-cigarette experienced group showed a higher risk of depressive symptoms (odds ratio, 1.71; 95% confidence interval, 1.004–2.924) than the e-cigarette unexperienced group. The result was adjusted based on the abovementioned covariates.CONCLUSION: In Korean adults, a significant association between e-cigarette smoking experience and depressive symptoms was observed.
Adult ; Alcohol Drinking ; Cross-Sectional Studies ; Depression ; Electronic Cigarettes ; Family Characteristics ; Humans ; Korea ; Logistic Models ; Marital Status ; Mental Health ; Nutrition Surveys ; Obesity ; Odds Ratio ; Prevalence ; Smoke ; Smoking

Purpose: As preterm infants have shown advances in survival rate, many very-lowbirth-weight (VLBW) infants have shown developmental delay even without a major brain injury. Thus, the incidence of and risk factors associated with poor neurodevelopmental outcome should be evaluated. Methods: A multicenter nationwide prospective longitudinal cohort study of VLBW infants born in South Korea between 2013 and 2015 was conducted. Poor neurodevelopmental outcome was diagnosed if the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (BSID)-III composite score was ≤85 (cognition, language, motor). We analyzed the associations of baseline neonatal characteristics, environmental characteristics and neonatal morbidities with poor neurodevelopmental outcome. Results: The study included 285 infants, of whom 34 (11.9%) exhibited cognition delay; 59 (20.7%), showed language delay and 32 (11.2%) showed motor delay. The mean gestational age and birth weight were 29 weeks and 1,130 g, respectively. Moderate and severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia (P=0.056) and intraventricular hemorrhage grade I (P=0.079) were marginally associated with cognition delay. Higher paternal educational level (P<0.05) was significantly associated with the language outcome. Birth weight (P<0.05) and head circumference at discharge (P<0.05) were the major predictors of motor delay. Conclusion The population-based nationwide cohort study shows that approximately 20% of VLBW infants without major brain injury have developmental delay. Several factors that are not directly associated with major brain injury were significantly associated with poor neurodevelopmental outcome.