PURPOSE: This study investigated the Korean social workers' burn-out factors and personal traits in hospice and palliative care field, and also examined the effect and correlation between their professionality, social support and supervision. METHODS: Data (N=46) from 46 social workers working at hospice and palliative care field were collected, and the data were analyzed for the inferential statistics using t-test, ANOVA, correlation and multiple regression with the SPSS 12.0 program. RESULTS: General factors of the burn-out were age and work experience. The effect of the organization environment is greatly dependant on social support and supervision, and the burn-out were protected when workers got an emotional support from their family. For the workers with supervision, the less negative feeling, the better for the burn-out protection. Furthermore, the low burn-out was thought about when professional organization, self regulation, job vocation and autonomy were utilized. Regression analysis needed that the burn-out were protected well when individual autonomy among expertise was guaranteed. As for social support, vertical support was able to protect physical burn-out. CONCLUSION: The training program for social workers in hospices and palliative care field is essential to reduce and prevent the burn-out. Hospice should be more activated and a training program with up-to-date knowledge and information should be adopted.
Burnout, Professional ; Hospice Care ; Hospices ; Humans ; Occupations ; Organization and Administration ; Palliative Care ; Self-Control ; Social Workers ; Societies

Caloric diet, such as fat and sugar intake, has rewarding effects, and has been indicated to affect the responses to addictive substances in animal experiments. However, the possible association between sucrose reward and the motivation for addictive drugs remains to be elucidated. Thus, we carried out behavioral tests after sucrose self-administration training to determine the effects of sucrose experience on rats' motivation for cocaine, locomotor sensitivity to cocaine, basal locomotor activity, anxiety level, and associative learning ability. The sucrose-experienced (sucrose) group exhibited higher lever press, cocaine infusion and break point, as well as upshift of cocaine dose-response curve in cocaine self-administration test, as compared with the control (chow) group. Additionally, despite similar locomotor activity in open field test and comparable score in cocaine-induced conditioned place preference, the sucrose group showed higher cocaine-induced locomotor sensitivity as compared with the chow group. The anxiety level and the performance in vocal-cue induced fear memory were similar between these two groups in elevated plus maze and fear conditioning tests, respectively. Taken together, our work indicates that sucrose experience promotes the rats' motivation for cocaine.
Animals ; Cocaine ; Conditioning, Classical ; Conditioning, Operant ; Memory ; Motivation ; Rats ; Reward ; Self Administration ; Sucrose

Objective: To analyze the effect of intervention programs and influencing factors regarding the community "5+1" staged diabetes target management on patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and to provide evidence for improving the quality of life (QOL). Methods: A total of 12 community health service centers from Shanxi province, Jiangsu province, and Ningxia Hui autonomous region were selected as intervention group and control group, by stratified cluster sampling method. "5+1" model was used in intervention groups and basic public health services model was applied in control groups for this two-year follow-up. Data was collected through a questionnaire on demographic and disease-related information, while the QOL was measured with SF-36. Multiple linear regression and conducted by SAS 9.4. Results: A total of 2 467 subjects were included at baseline and 1 924 had completed a two-year-long management service. After intervention programs being implemented, the net effect of PCS score between the intervention and the control groups was 13.6, with the net effect of MCS score as 29.8. Results from the multiple linear regression showed that the main factors affecting PCS scores included age, type of medical insurance, baseline PCS score and regions of residency. Main factors related to MCS score included age, type of medical insurance, baseline MCS score, hypertension, and region of residency. Conclusion: Community "5+1" staged diabetes target management model presented favorable effect of improving the QOL on T2DM patients.
Community Health Services/organization & administration* ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2/therapy* ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Program Evaluation ; Quality of Life ; Self Care ; Self-Management ; Surveys and Questionnaires

Recently, mobile health care has been applied to manage diabetes requiring self-management. Health care by mobile applications (apps) has a great advantage when applied to patients with diabetes; the adherence to self-management activities for diabetes can be improved through mobile apps. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared and approved the use of some mobile apps as medical devices for the management of diabetes since 2010. However, mobile apps may not be effective for all patients. We here report the effect of use of mobile-based diabetes care app (Healthy-note app) for 2 patients with diabetes, and discuss issues and strategies for effective mobile intervention. Further study is needed on improving patient's participation to increase the effect of management via a mobile app.
Delivery of Health Care ; Diabetes Mellitus ; Humans ; Mobile Applications* ; Self Care ; Smartphone ; Telemedicine ; United States Food and Drug Administration

Major depression is a common condition seen in the primary care setting. This article describes the suicide risk assessment of a depressed patient, including practical aspects of history-taking, consideration of factors in deciding if a patient requires immediate transfer for inpatient care and measures to be taken if the patient is not hospitalised. It follows on our earlier article about the approach to management of depression in primary care.
Asia ; Depression ; diagnosis ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Primary Health Care ; organization & administration ; Risk Assessment ; Risk Factors ; Self-Injurious Behavior ; Suicide ; prevention & control

The case presented multifactorial facets of depression and diabetes leading to noncompliance to both medical and psychiatric treatment resulting in suicide. A biopsychosocial approach was done to elucidate the complexity of the case, factoring in the adolescent storm, vicious cycle of diabetes and depression and effect of enmeshed attachments. Management involved short-term and long-term goals, focusing on psychoeducation about the nature and course of depression, psychiatric impact of depression leading to noncompliance, suicide precaution and treatment plans through psychopharmacology and psychoterapy, family therapy, liaison with the Pediatric Endocrinology and Nutrition service and support group involvement.

Human ; Female ; Depression ; Insulin--administration & Dosage ; Family Therapy ; Psychopharmacology ; Suicide ; Depressive Disorder ; Psychotherapy ; Patient Compliance ; Diabetes Mellitus ; Self-help Groups

According to users and places, blood glucose monitoring systems(BGMSs) can be divided into self-monitoring blood glucose test systems(SMBGs) and Point-of-Care Blood Glucose monitoring systems(POC-BGMSs). The Food and Drug Administration(FDA) believes that standards for SMBGs and POC-BGMSs should be different because of different operators, different use environments, different intendance uses and different applicable populations. Now the international standards for evaluating BGMSs include ISO 15197:2013 issued by International Organization for Standardization(ISO), two guidelines on blood glucose monitoring systems issued by FDA, and POCT12-A3 guidelines issued by the American Association for Clinical and Laboratory Standardization(CLSI), ISO standard and FDA guideline-OTC are applicable in SMBGs, CLSI guideline and FDA guideline-POCTI2-A3 are suitable for POC-BGMSs. By analyzing the accuracy evaluation processes of BGMSs based on four standard documents, it is found that the accuracy evaluation of medical BGMSs is more stringent. It is proposed that SMBGs and POC-BGMSs should be supervised separately.
Blood Glucose ; Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring ; Point-of-Care Systems ; Reference Standards ; Reproducibility of Results ; United States ; United States Food and Drug Administration

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a structural model explaining medication compliance of schizophrenia. From a review of the literature, a hypothetical model was developed based on the conceptual framework of the Health Belief Model with medication knowledge, symptom severity and social support as the exogenous variables, and perceived benefits, perceived barriers, substance use and medication compliance as the endogenous variables. Data was collected at various mental health facilities, including psychiatric outpatient clinics of general hospitals and community mental health centers, between March and May, 2001. A structured questionnaire was used by one- on- one interviews to collect data on 208 schizophrenic patients. Well established measurement instruments, with confirmed reliability, were used to assess each method variable. As a result of covariance structural analysis, the hypothetical model was found not to fit the empirical data well, so a parsimonious model was adopted after modifying the model. The final model was able to explain the 33% medication compliance. Medication knowledge, social support and perceived benefits had significant effects on medication compliance. The findings of this study address the importance of medication education and social support to promote medication compliance. It is also suggested that various education programs and support groups are needed to enhance medication compliance.
Adult ; Antipsychotic Agents/*administration & dosage ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; *Models, Psychological ; Patient Compliance/*psychology ; Schizophrenia/*drug therapy ; Self Administration/*psychology ; Social Support

OBJECTIVETo explore the effects of low-dose oral tadalafil on self-esteem, confidence and sexual relationship in ED patients.

METHODSWe treated 17 ED patients with oral tadalafil at the low dose of 5 mg once daily for 12 weeks, and used the paired t test to compare their scores on The Self-Esteem and Relationship Questionnaire (SEAR) and IIEF-5 and the results of nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT) obtained by nocturnal electrobioimpedance volumetric assessment (NEVA) before and after the medication.

RESULTSThe scores on SEAR and IIEF-5 were significantly increased (P < 0.01) and NPT markedly improved (P < 0.05) after tadalafil treatment as compared with the baseline.

CONCLUSIONLow-dose oral tadalafil once daily can significantly improve the self-esteem, confidence, sexual relationship satisfaction and NPT of ED patients.

Adult ; Carbolines ; administration & dosage ; therapeutic use ; Erectile Dysfunction ; drug therapy ; psychology ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Self Concept ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Tadalafil ; Vasodilator Agents ; administration & dosage ; therapeutic use

BACKGROUND: Oral anticoagulation with warfarin requires routine monitoring of prothrombin time to maintain the international normalized ratio (INR) within the appropriate therapeutic range. Coagu- Chek XS (Roche Diagnositic, Germany) is a portable coagulometer that measures the INR. We evaluated the precision and accuracy of CoaguCheck XS by comparing it with CA-1500 (Sysmex, Japan). METHODS: We analyzed the CV and the correlation of all INR results measured in 68 samples obtained from patients treated with warfarin and 10 samples from control subjects with no history of anticoagulant therapy with CoaguChek XS and CA-1500. We compared the turn-around time between two instruments and evaluated the differences between the results obtained with venous and capillary blood samples and those obtained with different lots of the test strip. We also evaluated the precision of the two instruments in 5 repeated tests with samples of normal and increased INR. RESULTS: Mean INR values of 5 repeated tests with the same samples were similar. The correlation of INR values between two instruments was excellent (r2=0.97, P=0.001), and the difference in the values between the two instruments was mostly within the 95% limit of agreement, but was shown to increase in direct proportion to INR values. The turn-around time of CoaguChek XS was shorter than that of CA-1500. The differences between venous and capillary blood and between different lots of the test trip were not significant (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: CoaguChek XS showed a good precision and correlation with CA-1500 with a very short turn-around time. This instrument should be clinically useful in monitoring INR of patients with oral anticoagulation.
Administration, Oral ; Anticoagulants/administration & dosage/pharmacology/*therapeutic use ; Drug Monitoring ; Humans ; International Normalized Ratio/*instrumentation ; Prothrombin Time/*instrumentation/methods ; Reproducibility of Results ; Self Care/instrumentation/methods ; Warfarin/administration & dosage/*therapeutic use