PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing lifetime smoking and current smoking among adolescents in South Korea. METHODS: Hierarchical logistic regression was conducted based on complex sample analysis using statistics from the 10th (2014) Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey. The study sample comprised 72,060 adolescents aged 12 to 18. RESULTS: The significant factors influencing adolescent lifetime smoking were female gender, older age, higher stress, higher weekly allowance, lower economic status, living apart from parents, parental smoking, sibling smoking, peer smoking, observation of school personnel smoking, and coed school compared to boys' school. The significant factors influencing adolescent current smoking were female gender, older age, higher stress, higher weekly allowance, both higher and lower economic status compared to middle economic status, living apart from parents, parental smoking, sibling smoking, peer smoking, observation of school personnel smoking, and coed school compared to boys' school. CONCLUSION: Factors identified in this study need to be considered in programs directed at prevention of adolescent smoking and smoking cessation programs, as well as policies.
Adolescent* ; Female ; Humans ; Korea* ; Logistic Models ; Parents ; Risk-Taking* ; Siblings ; Smoke* ; Smoking Cessation ; Smoking* ; Tobacco Use

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore male nurses’ experiences of workplace gender discrimination and sexual harassment in South Korea. Methods: Phenomenological qualitative methodology exploring male nurses’ experiences was employed to collect data, and thematic analysis of the data was conducted. Research subjects were recruited by convenience and snowball sampling. Ten male nurses participated in individual in-depth interviews via mobile phone. Data were collected from June 15 to July 24, 2020. Results: (Findings)Two themes were extracted that described male nurses’ experiences of workplace gender discrimination and sexual harassment. In the first theme, “facing gender discrimination from various dimensions,” nurses’ thoughts and feelings regarding gender discrimination from various sources were expressed. The second theme, “experiencing sexual harassment at work as a man,” presented experiences of sexual harassment as a male nurse and difficulties in being recognized as a victim. Conclusion Gender discrimination and sexual harassment experienced by male nurses stem from a wide range of socio-cultural factors, ranging from individuals to organizations, and institutions. Therefore, this problem requires a correspondingly broad approach for improvement, such as making efforts to avoid classifying certain roles according to gender, developing new standards considering the specific experiences of men as victims of sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, and continuing training to increase social sensitivity and interest in the harm suffered by minorities in society.

PURPOSE: This study was done to identify issues surrounding comprehensive nursing care within the national health insurance, analyze results and problems within national health insurance and to suggest new policy directions for stability. METHODS: A literature search was performed using RISS, KISS, PUBMED databases. Eighteen studies were analyzed. RESULTS: For implementation of comprehensive nursing care, there was improvement in nursing and in facilities. By improvement of structure, this new system showed positive outcomes in term of patient satisfaction and indicators related to patient safety. However, issues related to overload, job stress and evaluation of the system remain. In order to establish this system, staffing levels for nurses and nurse aids need to be adjusted to appropriate levels that reflect requirements for nursing. In addition, range of work needs to be determined clearly. Lastly, regular and systematic evaluation is needed to provide safe quality services to patients and to prevent waste of financial resources. CONCLUSION: Comprehensive nursing care needs to be implemented in ways that patients can be provided with safe and high quality service. There is a need to resolve several issues to allow this new system to function.
Humans ; Job Satisfaction ; National Health Programs* ; Nursing Care ; Nursing Services* ; Nursing* ; Patient Safety ; Patient Satisfaction

PURPOSE: This study was done to evaluate the adequacy of nurse staffing in integrated nursing care. METHODS: Statistical data on integrated nursing care from the National Health Insurance Corporation was used in this study. We extracted hospital data and patient data related to patient needs for nursing care. We analyzed the differences in patient needs by staffing level of each type of medical institution. RESULTS: Approximately 70% of medical institutions provided nursing care by the mid level of nurse staffing, which was 1:6, 1:10 and 1:12 in the tertiary hospital, general hospital and semi-hospital, respectively. The patients' characteristics were significantly different by hospital type. Especially, the distribution of the main diagnosis was completely different between the tertiary hospital and semi-hospital. In the tertiary hospital, the patient needs measured by severity and activities of daily living dependency were higher at higher staffing level than at lower staffing level. However, the nurse staffing was less relevant to the patient needs in the general hospital and semi-hospital. CONCLUSION: To provide high-quality nursing care, accurate workload forecasting is required at the start, and then the standard nurse staffing level can established based on workload forecasting.
Activities of Daily Living ; Diagnosis ; Forecasting ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; National Health Programs ; Nursing Care ; Nursing ; Tertiary Care Centers

BACKGROUND: In dental intravenous sedation, continuous intravenous infusion of a low-dose drug requires an infusion pump such as a syringe pump. To develop a new syringe pump for clinical use, the functions of the pump must meet certain international standards. Various safety and efficacy tests must be performed on the syringe pump, as stipulated by these standards, and an approval must be received from the approving agency based on such test results. METHODS: The authors of the present study developed a novel syringe pump and performed efficacy evaluation by testing its infusion speed at 1 and 25 ml/h, and infusion performance testing at 2 and 24 h. Moreover, performance evaluation was conducted by comparing the novel pump to an existing pump with the infusion speed varied from 1 to 5 ml/h. RESULTS: In the efficacy testing on the newly developed syringe pump, infusion with the infusion speed initially set to 1 ml/h resulted in infusion speeds of 1.00 and 0.99 ml/h in the 2- and 24-h assessment, respectively. Changing the infusion speed setting to 25 ml/h resulted in an infusion speed of 25.09 and 23.92 ml/h in the 2- and 24-h assessment, respectively. These results show no significant differences when compared with other commercially available pumps. CONCLUSIONS: The efficacy testing of the newly developed syringe pump showed the accuracy to be within tolerance. Based on these findings, we believe that the newly developed syringe pump is suitable for clinical use.
Data Accuracy ; Infusion Pumps ; Infusions, Intravenous ; Syringes*