ABSTRACT
Intro: Since November 2021, gradual changes in non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) had begun in consideration of the socio-economic cost and the high rate of COVID-19 vaccination. As an effort to monitor the COVID-19 situation and the effect of NPIs, regular risk assessment for COVID-19 has been conducted based on the input from the external advisory committee. This paper examines the correlation between the risk assessment results and other indicators, such as the incidence of COVID-19, public perception, community mobility, and the government policy from November 2021 to May 2022. Method(s): For weekly regular risk assessment of COVID-19, the data were collected from the National Infectious Disease Surveillance System website, which included incidence, mortality, and % of severe cases. Other indicators were from regular surveys on perceived risk among the public, community mobility from the Google website, and the government's response policy from The Oxford Stringency Index. The level of risk was classified into five levels from very low to very high. The level of COVID-19 risk and its correlation with the COVID-19 incidence, risk perception, community mobility, and government policy were examined. Finding(s): The result of the correlation analysis showed the highest positive correlation between the risk level and risk perception (r=0.86, CI 0.72-0.94). This indicates that the actual risk level and the risk perceived by the public are similar. Among the incidence-related indicators, the number of new severe cases of COVID-19 per week showed the highest correlation with the risk level (r=0.62, CI 0.33-0.80). Conclusion(s): The high correlation between the weekly severe cases and the overall COVID-19 risk level suggests that Korea's COVID-19 policy priority was mainly at protecting the high-risk populationCopyright © 2023
ABSTRACT
Intro: Event-based surveillance (EBS) and rapid risk assessment (RRA) are essential tools for the early warning system against outbreaks, especially in the initial stages of an incident of potential public health threat. Since the Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2015, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) established EBS and RRA systems. This paper described KDCA's implementation of EBS and RRA to support the decision-making process for acute public health events. Method(s): The process of EBS and RRA systems for potential public health threats occurring outside of Korea is described and potential barriers and challenges are discussed. Finding(s): EBS and RRA systems have been constantly utilized in Korea. One of the recent examples is the EBS and RRA activities for acute hepatitis of unknown etiology in children and the global monkeypox outbreak which provided the basis to establish timely surveillance and response systems. Discussion(s): EBS tends to rely heavily on access to timely information. The quality of information needs to be ensured through a verification process by trained personnel as the quality of information determines the credibility of EBS results. Efforts to strengthen the information coverage and enhance the quality of information are key elements of EBS and RRA. Standardized manuals and systematic implementation of the EBS and RRA enable a more accurate evaluation of the risk. The process of RRA also needs flexibility in the way the risk is estimated. Conclusion(s): Public health threats are more likely to be imported than before as exchanges among countries grow frequent due to the eased border control measures for COVID-19 in recent days. The EBS and RRA systems are essential tools for all countries to ensure a timely response. Efforts to improve access to timely information and to ensure the quality of information should be continuously made to improve EBS and RRA systems.Copyright © 2023
ABSTRACT
Purpose Nurses experience insufficient preparation for dealing with the death of their patients (Ferguson & Cosby, 2017). For proper learning, it is necessary for them to expose to the clinical environment during end-of-life care education. However, It is difficult for students to have sufficient end-of-life care training during the clinical training period because of short clinical practice hours, difficulty to access to patients or caregivers in the dying situation, and hardship to guarantee opportunities to experience dying situations (Randall et al., 2018;Smith et al., 2018). Thus, this study aims to examine the effects of an integrated end-of-life education program for nursing students. Method This is a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with two intervention groups and no control group. There were 16 participants in the group 1 while 14 in group 2. Group 1 received both the web-based virtual simulation and a clinical case study seminar on end-of-life care, while group 2 received only the web-based virtual simulation. In order to confirm the effect of the educational program, nursing students' end-of-life care knowledge, attitude toward end-of-life care, and educational self-efficacy were measured and compared through a survey which conducted before and after the program. The analysis included a paired T-test, an independent T-test and a Spearman's rank correlation test in order to compare changes in knowledge, attitude, and self-efficacy of the nursing students. Results and Discussion The mean age of participants was 21.73 (SD=1.57), of which 86.7% were women. The satisfaction with the virtual simulation was 3.93 (SD=0.73) in group 1 and 3.75 (SD=0.86) in group 2. There were significant changes in the end-of-life care knowledge (p=0.003) and attitude (p≤0.001) toward end-of-life care in group 1. There was a significant difference only in end-of-life care knowledge (p=0.037) group 2. Self-efficacy did not change significantly in either group, and each change did not show a significant correlation with satisfaction. Also, among each change, only the change in the end-of-life care attitude showed a significant difference between groups, and there was no significant difference in changes of end-of-life care knowledge and educational self-efficacy between both groups. The findings indicate that web-based virtual simulation alone may improve nursing students' knowledge. In particular, due to COVID-19 pandemic in recent years, it is important for students to access to patients and families and have learning opportunities for clinical practice through innovative ways. Virtual simulation may help them improve their clinical competency such as dealing with dying situations, caring for older patients, and communicating with their caregivers. Further research is necessary to examine the effects of not only virtual simulation but also integrated programs that includes clinical components such as case studies in the area of clinical education of end-of-life care for older adults. © 2022, Gerontechnology. All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
In today's world, there are a lot of outdoor navigation apps for visually challenged people, but there are none that can precisely tell a user's location inside a large structure. Indoor navigation is a complex task for the visually challenged as well as for the general public, especially in large structures like malls, airports, museums, factories, etc. Present solutions and technologies are not cost-effective as well as complex. Hence, we are proposing a low-cost model that uses Augmented Reality to place virtual anchors across a structure, so a person can navigate from one location to another with the help of these anchors. The model doesn't use technologies like GPS. Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence but here, the anchors placed are pervasive and persistent across the indoor environment for smooth navigation. Once placed, these virtual anchors remain at their location and can be used at any time by any person registered on our app. This model can be extended for the general public in any indoor space and also can be enhanced by gamification for better user interaction and retention. This model can also be extended to collaborate with the Aarogya Setu app, which can help us identify routes that go through spaces through which covid positive patients have passed which in turn helps us avoid those routes in real-time navigation. © 2020 IEEE.