Choonhae College of Health Sciences

The Occupational and Environmental Health Screening Cohort of Yangsan Korea (OEC-YK) was established to monitor long-term health outcomes in workers and environmental high-risk citizens through systematic periodic health examinations. The cohort integrates 623,402 examination instances from 105,768 participants at Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital (2012–2023), encompassing general health checkups, occupational exposure surveillance, cancer screenings, and others including asbestos-related surveillance. Examination types included general health examination (32.4%), cancer screening (20.6%), special health examination (16.2%), night-shift work examination (16.0%), chronic disease screening (4.8%), pre-placement examinations (2.1%), and asbestos-related surveillance (3.6%). At baseline, 59.0% were male and 75.5% were aged between 20 and 59 years. Follow-up rates reached 35.0% at 1 year, 31.9% at 2 years, and 3.2% at 11 years. Notably, the inclusion of systematic asbestos examinations, combined with a national asbestos job exposure matrix, allows detailed study of long-latency occupational diseases. This large-scale longitudinal dataset supports exposure-disease linkage analysis, job-exposure integration, and time-series modeling of worker health trajectories in Korea.

PurposeThis study aimed to investigate advance care planning needs expressed online.MethodsThis study collected data from online community posts and healthcare news sites. The search keywords included “death,” “euthanasia,” “life-sustaining medical care,” “life-sustaining treatment,” “advance directives,” “advance medical directives,” and “advance care planning.” Data collection spanned from February 2018 to February 14, 2020. Out of 2,288 posts, 1,190 were included in the final analysis. Data analysis was conducted using NVivo 12, a qualitative data analysis software program.ResultsContent analysis categorized patients' advance care planning needs into eight themes, 11 theme clusters, and 33 meaningful statements. Similarly, care providers' advance care planning needs were categorized into eight themes, 14 theme clusters, and 42 meaningful statements. The identified themes of care needs included life-sustaining medical care, decision-making related to life-sustaining medical care, physical care, environmental care, supportive and spiritual care, respect, preparing for death, and family.ConclusionThis study identified care needs from the perspectives of patients and their families. The findings may serve as preliminary data for future research and clinical applications.

This study aimed to develop an app-based self-management program based on the transtheoretical model (TTM) for breast cancer survivors' exercise practice, as well as to investigate the program's effects on the stage of change for exercise, exercise self-efficacy, exercise decisional balance, exercise amount, and body composition. This non-randomized controlled study included 52 participants (26 in each of the experimental and control groups, respectively). An app-based self-management program based on the TTM was conducted with the experimental group for a 12-week period. The program comprised three components: individual coaching for each stage of change for exercise based on TTM, amount of exercise and body composition monitoring, and online self-help meetings. Compared with the control group, the experimental group had significantly higher stages of change for exercise (p < .001), exercise self-efficacy (p < .001), exercise decisional balance (p = .002), exercise amount (p < .001), and body composition (body weight [p = .006], body mass index [p = .005], and body fat percentage [p = .010]) immediately and four weeks after the intervention. An app-based self-management program based on the TTM improves exercise behaviors in breast cancer survivors and provides physical benefits.

Purpose: Firefighters belong to an occupational group that is consistently exposed to psychological challenges, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study examines firefighters’ perceptions of psychological intervention programs.Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 firefighters who were divided into two focus groups. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis.Results: Six barriers and seven suggestions regarding psychological intervention programs were identified. The barriers were “work overload”, “uncomfortable counseling situation”, “perfunctory programs”, “lack of consulting specialists”, “limited number of participants”, and “lack of replacement workers while attending the intervention programs”. Suggestions to overcome these barriers included developing “sustainable” and “highly accessible” intervention programs “focused on positive aspects of traumatic events”, considering “job characteristics” and “individual psychosocial characteristics”, as well as employing “experts with knowledge of firefighters’ duties”, and “creating a supportive work environment for psychological intervention”.Conclusion: Based on these findings, the interventions should focus on the positive aspects of traumatic events, with flexibility and practicality, tailored to the individual and occupational characteristics of firefighters.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the career choice experiences of nursing students. Methods: A phenomenological approach was used for the study. Data were collected from September 1 to October 1, 2021, using open-ended questions in-depth interviews. Ten nursing students who had decided to find a job or complete an application to an employment institution participated in this study. Results: The four categories obtained as results were “Preparing myself,” “Chosen after conflict,” “Going through a tough tunnel and settling down,” and “Waiting with anticipation and worry.”Conclusion: This study explored the meaning and essence of the career choice experiences of nursing students. These results will provide basic data that can help nursing students make career choices.

Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the factors affecting a hypothetical model of testing for general hospital nurses’ job embeddedness.Methods: Data were collected from August 20 to September 19, 2021, by a self-administered questionnaire answered by 428 general hospital nurses. The data were analyzed by SPSS and AMOS.Results: Nine of the hypothetical model’s 12 hypotheses were supported by the data collected from all participants. The test results indicate that ego resilience, subjective career success, and recovery experience from job stress directly affect participants’ job embeddedness. Nurses’ work environments were reported to affect ego resilience and subjective career success, while at the same time ego resilience and subjective career success affected the participants’ job embeddedness. Work-life balance was found to affect ego resilience and ego resilience affected subjective career success, and at the same time subjective career success directly affected participants’ recovery experiences from job stress and job embeddedness. Of these variables, subjective career success had the strongest direct effect on participants’ job embeddedness. Work-life balance affected the participants’ recovery experiences from job stress, and their recovery experiences from job stress were found to directly affect job embeddedness.Conclusion: These results suggest that different management strategies to enhance hospital nurses’ job embeddedness should address nurses’ ego resilience, subjective career success, and recovery experiences from job stress.

Effective balance rehabilitation is essential to address flat foot (pes planus) which is closely associated with reduced postural stability. Although sensorimotor training (SMT) and short-foot exercise (SFE) have been effective for improving postural stability, the combined effects of SMT with SFE have not been evaluated in previous studies. The aim of this study was to compare the lone versus combined effects of SMT with SFE on postural stability among participants with flat foot. This was a single-blinded, randomized controlled trial. A total of 32 flat-footed participants were included in the study (14 males and 18 females) and assigned to the SMT combined with SFE group and SMT alone group. All participants underwent 18 sessions of the SMT program three times a week for six weeks. Static balance, dynamic balance, and the Hmax/Mmax ratio were compared before and after the interventions. Static and dynamic balance significantly increased in the SMT combined with SFE group compared with the SMT alone group. However, the Hmax/Mmax ratio was not significantly different between the two groups. Therefore, this study confirms that the combination of SMT and SFE is superior to SMT alone to improve postural balance control in flat-footed patients in clinical settings.

Objective: This study conducted correlation analysis between subjective surveys measuring xerostomia (mouth dryness) and objective assessment methods for measured values of oral moisture. By doing so, it sought to identify the appropriateness of assessment tools to measure xerostomia.

Purpose: This exploratory study aims to identify the influence of clinical practice belonging, satisfaction with major, and work values on the level of career identity among nursing students.Methods: The subjects of this study are 251 senior students from three nursing departments located in a metropolitan city. Using SPSS 22.0, the study uses technical statistics, t-test, One-way ANOVA, correlation, and multiple regression analysis.Results: The average scores for clinical practice belonging, satisfaction with major, and work values were 3.61, 3.87, and 3.70 out of 5.00, respectively, and 2.85 out of 4.00 for career identity. The factors affecting students' career identity were clinical practice belonging, aptitude, satisfaction with clinical practice, satisfaction with major, indoor work, service and employment at hospitals with 40 percent being explained by these variables.Conclusion: Through this study we found that clinical practice belonging has the greatest impact on career identity. In order to enhance clinical practice belonging, universities and clinical institutions need to develop new programs and curricula.

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of neurodynamic technique of tibial nerve on range of motion, pain, and mechanosensitivity of the lower extremity in healthy individuals. The study was a non-equivalent, one-group, and pre-post test design. Nineteen healthy adults participated in the study and conducted neurodynamic techniques of the tibial nerve. The outcome measures included range of motion, pain, and mechanosensitivity measured by electromyography during a straight leg raise test. Surface electromyography data were collected from the biceps femoris, medial gastrocnemius, lateral gastrocnemius, and tibialis anterior. There was a significant difference in range of motion and pain between the pre-test and the post-test. There was a non-significant difference in mechanosensitivity between the pre-test and the post-test. Therefore, we concluded that a neurodynamic technique of the tibial nerve reduced pain and increased range of motion in healthy adults. This neurodynamic technique is an effective intervention for improvement of lower limb pain and range of motion.