Development of Standardized and Competency-Based Curriculum in Nursing Informatics / 대한의료정보학회지

OBJECTIVE: The purposes of this study were to analyze the current status of nursing informatics course and to develop the standardized curriculum in nursing informatics course based on competency. METHODS: Data were collected through two phases. In the first phase, a survey was conducted on 115 nursing institutions to analyze the current status of nursing informatics course. In the second phase, two-round delphi technique was developed to determine the priority and relative weight of contents in nursing informatics course. Final samples composed of both 43 nursing institutions and 11 nursing informatics experts. RESULTS: Out of 43 nursing schools, 13 nursing schools offered nursing informatics course. Nursing informatics was taught mostly to the second year and had 2 credits. About 54% of respondents disagreed that nursing informatics should be included in the license examination for Registered Nurse. The subject matrix by priority and relative weight and a standardized curriculum for nursing informatics were developed. CONCLUSION: Continuous application and revision of nursing informatics curriculum should be needed.

The Usefulness of the Secondary Database for Occupational Asthma Surveillance System in Korea / 한국역학회지

Occupational asthma is defined as a disease that is characterized by airway narrowing and bronchial hyperresponsiveness caused by specific working environment. It is estimated that occupational asthma cases in Korea have been underreported. This study, using Korean Medical Insurance Data(KMID), examined the distribution of asthma patients' occupations and the frequency of high risk occupations for occupational asthma in Seoul, Korea to evaluate the usefulness of the KMID data as a database for active occupational asthma surveillance system. Six hundreds and forty two(30.7%) of 2093 patients who were finally chosen as a study population by using 1995-year KMID, were contacted by telephone. 296 persons(47.4%) of 642 patients replied that they were diagnosed as asthma. The occupations of 296 asthma patients were classified by Korean standardized industrial classfication (KSIC). The most common occupations included Wholesale and Retail trade(19.5%), Real estate, Renting and Business activities(14.9%), Construction(14.9%), Manufacturing(12.3%). Forty(13.5%) of 296 patients who could be classified by KSIC were working at high risk jobs for occupational asthma. KMID could be used as a useful data for occupational asthma surveillance system if the limitations of KMID, which is the accuracy of diagnosis, data accessibility, difficulty of following up study subjects, would be solved. The prevalence of occupational asthma could be estimated if the follow-up study diagnosing occupational asthma for asthma patients working in high risk jobs would be held.