Factors Influencing Professional Quality of Life in Intensive Care Unit Nurses of University Hospitals / 중환자간호학회지

Purpose@#: This study aims to identify job stress, emotional intelligence, and exhaustion of the nurses in comprehensive nursing service units and then verify the moderating and mediating effects of emotional intelligence on the relationship between job stress and exhaustion. @*Methods@#: Participants are 118 nurses working in two general hospitals. The collected data are analyzed using the SPSS WIN 27.0 and AMOS 18.0 programs by assessing frequency and percentage, mean and standard deviation, independent t-test and one-way ANOVA, Scheffé test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and hierarchical multiple regression analysis and bootstrapping. @*Results@#: Exhaustion has a statistically significant positive correlation with job stress (r=.40, p ＜.001) and a statistically significant negative correlation with emotional intelligence (r=-.26, p =.004). A partial mediating effect of emotional intelligence is found between job stress and exhaustion, however, there is no moderating effect. @*Conclusion@#: It is expected that to reduce the exhaustion of nurses in comprehensive nursing service units, it is necessary to assess job stress and emotional intelligence, and strengthen emotional intelligence along with job stress intervention.

Advanced fibrosis is not a negative pretreatment predictive factor for genotype 2 or 3 chronic hepatitis C patients

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Chronic hepatitis C patients with advanced fibrosis have unsatisfactory sustained virological response (SVR) rates. Few data demonstrating the efficacy of combination therapy in chronic hepatitis C patients with advanced fibrosis in South Korea are available. The purpose of this study was to assess whether the stage of fibrosis impacts the efficacy of combination therapy for chronic hepatitis C. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed data for a total of 109 patients with chronic hepatitis C, treated with peginterferon alfa and ribavirin. SVR according to the stage of liver fibrosis assessed by pretreatment liver biopsy and genotype results were analyzed. RESULTS: Data from 66 genotype 1 patients (60.6%) and 43 genotype 2 or 3 patients (39.4%) among the 109 patients were analyzed. SVR rates for the genotype 1 patients were significantly lower for the stage 3-4 group (32.1%) than the stage 0-2 group (78.9%; P<0.001). SVR rates (92.0% for stage 0-2, 77.8% for stage 3-4, P=0.184) of genotype 2 or 3 patients were not significantly different according to fibrosis stage. Likewise, the frequency of adverse events was not significantly different according to fibrosis stage. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to patients without advanced fibrosis, we can anticipate good SVR rates for genotype 2 or 3 patients with advanced fibrosis and they did not show an inferior tolerability for peginterferon and ribavirin combination therpy. Our results suggest that active treatment is needed for genotype 2 or 3 patients with advanced fibrosis.