PURPOSE The purpose was to investigate the physiological parameter and physical health status and health perception in the elderly, and to find the correlation between these variables. The subjects were 139 in Kyungi senior center. METHOD: The instruments for this study were physiological parameters, which were composed of vital capacity, blood pressure, pulse oxygenation, hand grip power, body fat and physical health status scale developed by researcher, and health perception scale developed by Ware(1976). The data were analyzed by the SPSS-PC 11.0 version. RESULTS: 1) 7.9% of subjects were included in abnormal range of vital capacity, 40.3% were systolic hypertension and 11.5% were diastolic hypertension. And 92.1% were included in normal range of pulse oxygenation, 79.8% were weakened hand grip power, and 10.1% of subjects were included in normal range of body fat. 2) The total mean score of the physical health status was 26.34 of a possible maximum score of 45. The physical health status score of women was lower than man's. 3) The mean score of man's health perception was 24.52 and women's was 20.39 of a possible maximum score of 44. 4) There was a significant positive correlation between hand grip power and physical health status(r=.28, p=.001). And a significant correlation between physical health status and health perception was found (r=.24, p=.004). CONCLUSION: It is concluded that the blood pressure, hand grip power and body fat among the physiological parameters of elderly subjects in Kyungi senior center were included in abnormal range. The factors were related life style. therefore, it is suggested that the health education to change life style for the elderly is needed.
PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of telephonic counseling on burnout, depression, life satisfaction, and perceived physical health among family caregivers of older adults with dementia. METHOD Subjects were randomly assigned into telephonic counseling group (n=21) and the comparison group (n=32). A weekly telephone counseling was conducted by research assistants for 12 weeks. T-test were used to answer the research questions. RESULT 1) There were no significant differences between the two groups on the level of burnout, depression, life satisfaction, and perceived physical health after telephone counseling. 2) Spouse caregivers under the telephone counseling tended to report higher perceived physical health than comparison group at the post-test (t=-1.88, p=.08). Spouse caregivers under the telephone counseling tended to report higher emotional exhaustion and lower feeling of self achievement. 3) Daughter-in-law caregivers under telephone counseling showed increased feeling of self achievement, improved physical health condition, and decreased depression. CONCLUSION This study showed potential effects of the problem-solving telephone counseling to improve perceived physical health and to reduce the level of burnout and depression. The findings suggest the necessity of screening most vulnerable subgroups of caregivers to increase the effectiveness of nursing intervention such as telephone counseling.
The purpose of this study is to compare the physical health, anxiety and depression of the Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group with those of a non-trained group and to analyze the relationship between the training period of Dan-Jeon Bre athing method and physical health, anxiety, and depression. The number of people in the Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group over 3 months was 149 and in the non-trained group 142. Data were collected from August to October 1999. As tools, 35 physical symptom questions were chosen from The Cornell Medical Index modified by Nam(1965) and from the Symptom Checklist-90-Revision(SCL-90-R) by Kim(1984); 10 questions on anxiety and 13 questions on depression were used in the study. The statistics of the study were gathered by using SPSS Window; the analysis was made by applying x(2)-test, t-test, Pearson correlation, ANOVA and Scheffe tests. The results were as follows. 1. The Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group had lower physical symptom score and showed less anxiety and depression than the non-trained group, which supported the 1st, 2nd, 3rd hypotheses. 2. The longer the training period of Dan-Jeon Breathing, the lower the physical symptom score, which supports the 4th hypothesis, but the 5th and, 6th hypotheses were not supported because anxiety and depression did not get lower as the training period of Dan-Jeon Breathing got longer. 3. The physical symptom score, anxiety and depression that were made by the general characteristics of Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group were analyzed. As a result, the physical symptom score of women was greater than that of men. Physical symptoms score and the rate of anxiety and depression were different by education levels. The degree of anxiety was different by age. Those who have a religion have a higher physical symtoms score than people who have no religion. There was no difference in physical health score, anxiety and depression according to marital status, economic status and occupations. The results suggest that the physical and mental health status of Dan-Jeon Breathing trained group is better than that of the non-trained group. Physical symptoms scores gets lower as the training period of Dan-Jeon Breathing gets longer which results in the improvement of physical health status.