No abstract available.

No abstract available.

This study was designed to compare care needs of patients with cancer and family members in inpatient and outpatient settings. The questionnaire was a Likert type 5 point scale with 57 items on four need categories; informational, physical care emotional care and socioeconomic care. There were significant differences between inpatient and outpatient settings. Also, there were significant differences in degree of care need according to gender, religion, marital status, economic status, public insurance status, and the past regimen. In conclusion, emotional needs perceived by patients with cancer and family members were higher than the others. Based upon the result, it is recommended that the research to compare needs between cancer patients who have a same illness and family member are necessary.
Humans ; Inpatients* ; Insurance Coverage ; Marital Status ; Outpatients* ; Surveys and Questionnaires

No abstract available.
Otitis Externa* ; Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon*

PURPOSE: This study was to identify activities and related problems on health promotion of public health nurses, and to investigate basic data proposed to revise strategies of Health Promotion Nurse Specialists (HPNS). METHOD: The subjects of this study were 787 public health nurses sampled by clustering of the entire nation of Korea. Data were collected by focus group studies and cross-sectional survey during April to October of 1999. Results: 13.3% of public health nurses took responsibility for health promotion projects and 45.9% were involved in health promotion work with in home care or other routine activities. Also, the factors public health nurses perceived as barriers to implement activities for health promotion were time limitation, lack of ability for planning projects, insufficient time for specialties, inadequate understanding about health promotion project. CONCLUSION: According to the study, they need to have special education and further technical support. These results have important implications for the establishment for the role of Health Promotion Nurse Specialist. Also, in developing systems and curriculums for Health Promotion Nurse Specialist, the major factors described above need to be considered carefully.
Cross-Sectional Studies ; Curriculum ; Education, Special ; Focus Groups ; Health Promotion ; Home Care Services ; Korea ; Nurses, Public Health* ; Public Health* ; Specialization

PURPOSE: This study was done to investigate the influence of organization and community job embeddedness on turnover intention of nurses in small and medium sized general hospitals. METHODS: The participants, 333 nurses, were recruited from small and medium sized general hospitals in Korea. Data were collected by self-report questionnaires on job-embeddedness and turnover intention and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Independent t-test, One-way ANOVA and Scheffé', Pearson correlation coefficient, and multiple linear regression analysis with the SPSS 18.0 program. RESULTS: The score for job embeddedness and it's 6 factors, and turnover intention were above 3 on a 5 point scale with the exception of organizational sacrifice. There was a significant difference in turnover intention according to age, marital status, salary, and position. There were significant negative correlations between the 6 factors of job embeddedness and turnover intention. Variables entered in multiple regression showed that organizational sacrifice, organizational fit and age were significant contributing factors to turnover intention. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that there is a need for strategies to enhance job embeddedness, especially organization sacrifice and organization fit. These factors should be developed and used to decrease turnover intention of nurses in small and medium sized general hospitals.
Hospitals, General* ; Intention* ; Korea ; Linear Models ; Marital Status ; Salaries and Fringe Benefits

No abstract available.
Aneurysm, False*

Natural products are increasingly appreciated as a lead for drug discovery and development. A number of investigators have studied various activities of natural products and have found that they have not only nutritional effects but also beneficial properties to cure various diseases and to maintain good health. Job's Tear(Yul-Moo) is a grass crop that have long been used in traditional medicine and a nourishing food. Job's Tear has been reported to exhibit anti-inflammatory, stomachic, antiallergic activity, and antispastic effects and has been used in China for the treatment of warts, rheumatism, and neuralgia although its mechanism remains unclear. Previous results in our laboratory demonstrated that the ethanol extract and water extract of Job's Tear exerted an immune regulatory function on mice cells in vitro. The present study was performed to investigate the ex vivo effect of Job's Tear on immune function. Seven to eight weeks old mices(Balb/c) were fed ad libitum on chow diet and water extract of Job's Tear were orally administrated every other day for two or four weeks at two different concentrations (50 and 500mg/kg B.W.). Proliferation of mice spenocytes and antibody production to sheep red blood cells(SRBC) using hemolytic plague forming cell assay were used to indicate the immune activity. Splenocytes proliferation of Job's Tear with mitogen stimulation such as Con A and LPS was enhanced at 50 mg/kg B.W. concentrations compared to those of control group. In case of antibody production to sheep red blood cells, the number of antibody- secreting cells was increased by administration of 50mg/kg B.W. concentration in mice immunized as a T-dependent antigen. From the present study, Job's Tear water extracts may be suggested to stimulate the mice immune response by enhancing the splenocytes proliferation and the number of plague forming cells.
Animals ; Antibody Formation ; Biological Products ; China ; Diet ; Drug Discovery ; Erythrocytes ; Ethanol ; Humans ; Medicine, Traditional ; Mice* ; Neuralgia ; Plague ; Poaceae ; Research Personnel ; Rheumatic Diseases ; Sheep ; Stomach ; Warts ; Water

PURPOSE: Although alpha-fetoprotein is one of the most commonly used tumor markers in Korea, most of the radioimmunoassay kits for alpha-fetoprotein have been imported from foreign countries. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of a recently developed domestic immunoradiometric kit for alpha- fetoprotein (Riakey AFP IRMA CTR, Sin-Jin Medics, Seoul, Korea). MATERALS AND METHODS: We evaluated intra- and inter-assay precision, recovery rate, parallelism, and sensitivity of serum alpha-fetoprotein measurement using Riakey AFP IRMA CTR kit. The values of alpha-fetoprotein measured by Riakey AFP IRMA CTR kit were compared with those measured by two foreign commercial kits (alpha-fetoproteina of Radim and alpha-feto.riabead of Abbott). RESULTS: Intra-assay coefficients of variation on three different levels were 5.3% for 18.9 ng/ml, 3.4% for 133 ng/ml and 1.6% for 330 ng/ml. Inter-assay coefficients of variation were 9.7% for 20.9 ng/ml, 3.2% for 137 ng/ml and 4.1% for 330 ng/ml respectively. Recovery rate tests on all three different levels showed within 100+/-10%. Parallelism was also good and the sensitivity was 0.63 ng/ml. There was strong correlation between the measurement of alpha-fetoprotein by Riakey AFP IRMA CTR and that by two foreign commercial kits(r=0.98). CONCLUSION: The first Korean domestic immunoradiometric kit for alpha-fetoprotein, Riakey AFP IRMA CTR, performed well for clinical use.
alpha-Fetoproteins* ; Fetal Proteins ; Immunoradiometric Assay* ; Korea ; Radioimmunoassay ; Seoul ; Biomarkers, Tumor

BACKGROUND: Whole body 131I scan is routinely performed in the postoperative evaluation of patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma to detect recurrence and functioning metastasis. Previous reports suggested that posttreatment whole body scan had higher rate of detecting metastatic lesions that were not visualized by pretreatment images. We observed the frequency of discordance of the two scans and analysed the clinical significances. METHODS: Forty-one patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma underwent radioactive iodine-131 whole body scans after administration of diagnostic dose (4 mCi) and then therapeutic dose (100~200 mCi of iodine-131). The median age of the patients was 46.9 +/- 15.7 years (range, 17~76). RESULTS: In 16 of the 41 patients (39.0%), pretreatment scan showed additional uptakes that were not seen in the pretreatment scan. Serum thyroglobulin was elevated in 13 of the 16 patients. Of the 22 patients who had been received radioactive iodine therapy previously, eight patients showed new additional lesions in the therapeutic scans but there was no significance according to the history of radioactive iodine therapy, Addisional uptakes after therapeutic dose were noted in neck area in 9 cases, lung in 2 cases, bone in 4 cases and mediastinum in one case. Diffuse hepatic uptake was definitely seen in 7 cases and there were 2 cases whose scans showed liver uptake without any thyroid uptake. CONCLUSION: Posttreatment whole body scan is more sensitive to detect residual tissues and metastasis compared to the usual pretreatment diagnostic whole body scan, and it is suggested that posttreatment whole body scan should be routinely performed after 'I therapy in patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma for exact evaluation.
Humans ; Iodine ; Liver ; Lung ; Mediastinum ; Neck ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Recurrence ; Thyroglobulin ; Thyroid Gland* ; Thyroid Neoplasms* ; Whole Body Imaging