Community Dwellers' Perception of Past Life Recollection and Preparation for Death / 한국호스피스완화의료학회지

PURPOSE: This study is to understand how community members perceive past life recollection and preparation for death. METHODS: Using a questionnaire, we surveyed 160 adult residents of one of the districts (gu) in Seoul, Korea. Descriptive statistics were used. RESULTS: Participants chose their 30s and 40s as the most difficult time in their lives. The most painful experience was "an illness of a family member", followed by "trouble with a spouse", and "trouble with children". As for the most difficult social experience, "sense of loss in life" was ranked the highest. Personally, the happiest time was "accomplishment of a goal", while it was "happiness through children" in family relationship and "contribution to society through my career" in social life. As for the most regrettable experience, personally "having lived without purpose" was the highest, "not meeting my parents' expectation more" in family relationship; "not providing sufficient education" in relationship with children; "not having an occupation that I wanted" in work life, and "lack of social skills" in social life. More than 87% of the surveyed showed a positive attitude about the system of the do not resuscitate (DNS) order. For a situation where participants were supposed to have an incurable disease, "I want to be notified of the true condition" and "I want to write a will and advanced directives" ranked high, receiving more than 3.1 points out of 4. CONCLUSION: These results demonstrate the need for death education to provide people with an opportunity to accept their regrettable experiences in the past as part of their life. Also, this study suggests the importance of writing advanced directives for people to prepare for"death with dignity" how it can help their decision to be better respected.

Death Recognition, Meaning in Life and Death Attitude of People Who Participated in the Death Education Program / 한국호스피스완화의료학회지

PURPOSE: This study was to identify the death recognition, meaning in life, and death attitude of participants in the death education program. METHODS: A survey was conducted, and 205 data were collected. Descriptive statistics, chi-square-test, ANOVA, and Duncan test were used. RESULTS: 1) The followings were the characteristics of death recognition shown by the participants. Over half of the participants said that they had given some thoughts on their deaths, that they had agreeable view on death acceptance, and that diseases and volunteer works made them think about their deaths. Moreover, suffering, parting with family and concerns for them, etc. were the most common reasons for the difficulty of accepting death. As for 'the person whom I discuss my death with', spouse, friend, and son/daughter were the most chosen in this order. Lastly, the funeral type that most of the participants desired was cremation. 2) The means of meaning in life and death attitude were 2.92+/-0.29 and 2.47+/-0.25, respectively. There were significant differences between health status, meaning in life and death attitude. 3) A significant positive corelationship was found between meaning in life and death attitude (r=0.190, P=0.001). CONCLUSION: For an effective death education program that would fit each individual's situation, an educational content that can make a person understand the meaning of his or her life and death, includes knowledge to lessen the fear and anxiety of death, and helps a person heal from the loss of a family member is absolutely necessary.

Distribution of Blood pressure and Current State of Life Style Modification on Male Workers in a Large Factory: Analysis According to JNC-6 Guideline / 대한산업의학회지

OBJECTIVES: To describe the distributions of blood pressure level and risk group, and the current state of life style modification in the population of a large factory. METHODS: We surveyed 1,088 workers in a large factory from June 2002 to August 2002. Information related to hypertension was collected through a questionnaire and medical examination. We classified the blood pressure level and risk group using JNC-VI criteria, and the current state of life style modification and medication according to the blood pressure level in the entire study population. REULTS: The prevalence of hypertension was 30.1% in all workers. The distribution of blood pressure level was 656 (60.3%) in normal stage, 160 (14.7%) in high normal stage, 190 (17.5%) in stage 1, 67 (6.1%) in stage 2, and 15 (1.4%) in stage 3. The numbers of workers in risk groups A, B and C were 296 (27.2%), 690 (63.4%) and 102 (9.4%), respectively. Among all workers, 432 (39.7%) needed to modify their lifestyle; 106 of whom (24.5%) needed to go on hypertensive drug medication. Overweight subjects were more common in stage 2 than in other stages (p=0.02). The numbers of smokers and low-exercisers were signigicantly lower in the higher blood pressure group than the lower blood pressure group (p<0.01). Alcoholic drinking was evenly distributed in all blood pressure level. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of hypertension was 30.1% in all workers. The most common stage of blood pressure level was normal, followed by stage 1, high normal stage, stage 2, stage 3. The number of subjects in risk group B was more than that in the other risk groups. We recommend total worker education and the practice of lifestyle modification.

Lead Levels in Maternal and Umbilical Cord Blood / 대한산업의학회지

This study was conducted to evaluate the blood lead levels in 141 pregnant women who were not occupationally exposed to lead and their umbilical cord, arid to identify some differences in blood lead levels by living area. ; The subjects-were all delivered at St. Benedict Hospital in Pusan and the blood lead levels were measured by graphite furance atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The summarized results were as follows. 1. The geometric mean lead levels in maternal and cord blood were 8.0+/-1.8microgram/dl, 5.0+/-0.6lmicrogram/dl respectively. 2. Lead levels in maternal (8.7+/-1.7microgram/dl) and cord blood(5.4+/-0.7microgram/dl) of industrial area(n=24) were higher than residential area(n= 124) which were 7.9+/-1.7microgram/dl and 5.0+/-0.6microgram/dl respectively (p<0.05). 3. Maternal blood lead concentration was significantly correlated to cord blood lead concentration (r=0.6090, p<0.001), but other variables (maternal age, paternal smoking, birth weight, etc) were not correlated.

Minimum Optimal Scale of the Self-Employed Health insurance Programs in Korea / 예방의학회지

The purpose of this study is to estimate the minimum optimal scale(MOS) of the self-employed health insurance associations. Considering the high proportion of operating expenses, the author have selected 254 regional health insurance associations from the 1990 Finance Report of the self-employed health insurance programs. both a quadratic function and a hyperbolic function were chosen for the analysis. The dependent variables are the average maintenance cost per insured person and per household, and the independent variables are the number of insured members and of household. The minimum optimal scale was obtained from the differentiation of the quadratic function. Major findings are summarized as follows: 1. The M.O.S. was calculated as 166,174 members (27,442 households) for the rural self-employed health insurance associations and 258,462 members (75,446 households) for the urban. Providing that both the rural and urban health insurance associations would e integrated, the M.O.S. be found to become 231,687 members (68,101 households) 2. Compared with the optimal minimum scale, the magnitude of the current health insurance association found to be much smaller, less than half of the optimal scale. 3. In order to reduce the operating cost, it is necessary to enlarge the operational scale of self-employed health insurance associations.