| Jung Sun Kim | 4 Articles |
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[English]
In order to examine the issue of women and health in Korean society, we need to adopt a new approach to consider health and body as a subject of social theory beyond the biomedical model. Health and diseases are not objective entities defined by universal standards that are separate from the patient or physician's life experience, but rather the products of social, cultural, and political processes. From this point of view, this paper explores Korean women and health in two aspects of health and medical field, that is, women as medical service beneficiaries and providers. First, the gender paradox phenomenon—women live longer, but suffer from more illnesses—was confirmed by evaluating the physical and mental health status of women. The life expectancy of Korean women is longer, but their morbidity rate of physical and mental health and subjective health evaluation is worse than men. Second, as medical service providers, the present status of female doctors showed the horizontal and vertical segregation in the medical labor market despite of the increase of female doctors and medical students. We pointed out the problems of gender inequality in health care sector and discuss policy implications of ‘gender specific medicine’ to improve women's health and medical education.
[English]
This article is investigating the general status of hospital computerization and doctors' reactions to these changes in four general hospitals. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from two university-affiliated hospitals and two private general hospitals in Seoul. The questionnaire survey was conducted in 1996, and the data contain 81 doctors from four hospitals. We also collected in-depth-interview data from 8 doctors in these hospitals. We revewed the general status of information system and utilization level in general hospitals and analyzed doctors' response to these changes focusing on four areas of medical care ; 1) jobs and functions of the doctors in patient care; 2) doctors' autonomy and their status ; 3) doctors' relations with other personnel; and 4) the quality of medical care. The results are : 1) The general status of information system in general hospitals are limited to the comput-erization of the administrative part, and thus very few hospitals employ information system directly to the patient care. 2) In terms of doctors' job and functions, the computerization of the administrative part of hospital works increased the efficiency of doctors' patient care in charting, keeping and sear-ching data, but put more burden on them for doing double jobs of hand-writing and comput-erization. 3) The autonomy of doctors and their status have not been noticeably changed in the process so far, but there appears a possibility that doctors could defend themselves to the manager's control over them through information system. 4) The computerization of the hospital works tends to reduce an unnecessary face-to-face interaction, which is expected to facilitate communications in the hospital. There are also some changes in the relationship between doctors and semi-professional personnels such ans, nurse and medical technicians. 5) Doctors pointed out that a few positive effects of the computerization on the quality of medical care on patients' side have emerged and thus expected improvement in the quality of medical care in the future.
[English]
This study attempts to explore the adapting behaviors of medical professions in information society, focusing on nurses' responses to the changes driven by the implementation of information system in four general hospitals. In addition to the general status of the information in the hospitals, we analyze four dimensions of the adapting behaviors of nursed in the implementation process of the hospital work. These are 1) changes in the jobs and functions of the nurses ; 2) changes in their autonomy and status; 3)changes in human relations ; and 4) the quality of medical services. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from two university-affiliated hospitals and two private general hospitals in Seoul. The quantitative data contain the responses of 92 nurses from four hospitals and we performed an in-depth-interview with 12 nurse to complement the quantitative data. 1) The implementation of information system in the sample hospitals are limited to the computerization of the administrative part of the medical care. 2) This limited computerization of the hospital works does not seem to increase the efficiency of nursing itself, but rather put mote burden on nurses doing double jobs of handwriting and computerization. 3) The autonomy of nurses and their relate status has not been noticeably changed in the process. Nurses, however, reported to have conflicts with other professions over the job distributions. 4) The computerization of the hospital works tend to reduce an unnecessary face-to-face interaction, which is expected to facilitate communications in the hospital. But there are still conflicts among medical professions over the boundary of their duties and responsibilities. 5) Nurse pointed out that the positive effects of the computerization on the quality of service are limited to shorten the time of care. The results of this study confirms our hypothesis that the information system would change jobs and functions, autonomy and status, human relations, and quality of sevices in nursing. Some of the changes are positive although the implementation of information system is expected to put more burden on nursing for a while. Most nurses, however, expected the computerization will provide better services to the patients in the long run.
[English]
In order to avdance understaning of the complex social process of individual drinking behavior, this cross-cultural study examined the effects of cultural and psychological factors on drinking behaviors among Koreans, Korean-Chinese and Chineas. Using the survey data collectedfrom lune, 1994 to April, 1995 both in Korea and Yanbian, China, we tested the hypothesisthat the social and cultural environment would lead differnt drinking behavior among Koreans,Korean-Chinese and Chinese in addition to the individual psychological factors. Subjects were 206 Koreans, 211 Korean-Chines and 204 Chines, total 621 subjects. The results are : 1) The average amount of alcohol consumption and of blood level is highest in Koreans. 2) In terms of drinking motivation, the effect of blind drunkeness and group solidarity factors are higher for Koreans than others, whereas business purpose and controlling drinkingbehavior are higher among Korean-Chinese and Chinese. 3) There is no significant differences in the social motivation, while emotional motivation ishigher among Chinese for the individual motivation. 4) Age and emotional motivation are the main factors affecting the total amount of alcoholintake and the drinking frequency among Koreans. Group solidarity and blind drunkeness alsotend to lead the frequent drinking event for them. The factors of blind drunkeness and groupsolidarity also has causal effects on the frequencies of drinking for Korean-Chinese in Yanabian,while higher emotional motivaiotn as a psychological factors tends to lead a more frequentdrinking among Chinese. 5) These results show that there are differences in drinking behaviors due to the social and cultural differences among Korean-Chinese and Chinese especially in the frequencies of drinking rather than the total amount of alcohol intake. Citations Citations to this article as recorded by
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