Comparison of speech recognition performance with and without a face mask between a basic and a premium hearing aid in hearing-impaired listeners.

BACKGROUND: The mask mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic leads to communication challenges as sound energy gets reduced and the visual cues are lost due to the face mask. This study examines the impact of a face mask on sound energy and compares speech recognition performance between a basic and a premium hearing aid. METHODS: Participants watched four video clips (a female and a male speaker with and without a face mask) and repeated the target sentences in various test conditions. Real-ear measurement was performed to investigate the changes in sound energy in no mask, surgical, and N95 mask conditions. RESULTS: With the face mask on, sound energy significantly decreased for all types of masks. For speech recognition, the premium hearing aid showed significant improvement in the mask condition. CONCLUSION: The findings emphasize and encourage health care professionals to actively use communication strategies, such as speaking slowly and reducing background noise, when interacting with individuals with hearing loss.

Identifying patterns of lifestyle behaviours linked to sociodemographic characteristics and health conditions among young adults in South Korea.

AIMS: To identify specific patterns of lifestyle behaviours among young adults and examine the relationships of the patterns to sociodemographic characteristics and health conditions (hypertension, diabetes and obesity). DESIGN: Descriptive, correlational study. METHODS: Data from a nationally representative sample of 4562 young adults aged 19-39, who participated in the 2016-2018 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, were analysed. Latent class analysis was used to identify the patterns of lifestyle behaviours, including smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and vaccination. Generalized linear regression analysis was used to examine the relationships among lifestyle behaviour patterns, sociodemographic characteristics and health conditions. RESULTS: Three patterns of lifestyle behaviours were identified: physically active (6.9%), high risk (21.5%) and passive (71.6%). The membership of these three patterns was significantly associated with sociodemographic characteristics (age, sex, education level, occupation and living arrangement). Among the three groups, young adults in the high-risk group were found to be significantly associated with all three health conditions (hypertension, diabetes and obesity) while controlling for sociodemographic characteristics. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that young adults are likely to engage in unhealthy lifestyle behaviours that are related to individual socioeconomic conditions, which could negatively affect their health conditions. IMPACT: This study provides insights into the lifestyle behaviours among young adults who have been recognized to be socially disadvantaged. This could help develop education and prevention programmes tailored to specific patterns of lifestyle behaviours for improving health while considering their socioeconomic contexts. NO PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: This applies to this research as the focus was on young adults in South Korea only.

Phenomenological Study of Women's Experiences of Neonatal Transport After Childbirth in Korea.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the experiences of women in Korea who were separated from their newborns when they were transported to neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) to receive treatment. DESIGN: Phenomenological. SETTING: A university hospital with approximately 600 beds in Seoul, Korea. PARTICIPANTS: Women who experienced neonatal transport after childbirth from March to May 2021 (N = 9). METHODS: We collected data through individual in-depth interviews and analyzed them using Colaizzi's procedure. RESULTS: We extracted four overarching themes that represented the experiences of participants: Outsider Left Alone, Enduring in a Different World, The Lost Starting Line, and Running Together. CONCLUSION: Our findings captured the unique experiences of women whose newborns were transported from the hospitals where they were born to NICUs at other hospitals to receive treatment. It is necessary to develop and apply tailored nursing interventions, such as assessment and support for postpartum blues or depression, to ensure that postnatal care and healthy maternal transition are not hindered.

Factors Influencing Hearing Aid Satisfaction in South Korea.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is three-fold: 1) to evaluate factors influencing hearing aid (HA) satisfaction; 2) to provide a profile of HA satisfaction in daily life; and 3) to examine the reasons why people gave up using HAs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data for 1148 respondents were statistically analyzed and reported. RESULTS: In the study, age (ß=-0.03, p<0.01), level of education (ß=1.21, p<0.01), HA purchase price (ß=1.50, p<0.01), bilateral amplification (ß=1.23, p<0.01), wearing time (ß=0.28, p<0.01), and HA fitting and fine tuning on a regular basis (ß=1.71, p<0.01) significantly influenced HA satisfaction. In addition, the authors observed that the most satisfactory factors were clarity of sound (53.5%), people's trust in their HA (61.7%), and listening from a quiet environment (72.8%) in the domains of sound quality, HA features, and listening environments, respectively. Finally, with multiple choices being possible, 65% of the 40 respondents who no longer used HAs answered that their HAs ended up in a drawer since the background noise was annoying and distracting. CONCLUSION: This study is significant in that it is a large-scale multi-center research to comprehensively examine the factors influencing HA satisfaction in South Korea. This data will provide helpful information that could lead to the successful rehabilitation of hearing loss with HAs.

A transformative service research for healthy transition to adulthood of young people living alone in Korea.

This study was conducted to explore phenomena related to the physical, psychological and social health vulnerabilities of young people who lived alone and to establish strategy for service implementation to facilitate their healthy transition to adulthood. In accordance with the double diamond process of service design, five workshops involving 12 participants and 9 experts were held from July to November 2018 in the D-district of Seoul, Korea. As a result, the participants were identified as a difficult group to engage in health management because of their features: unconcern for health, inevitable neglect for health or fixation of lifestyle far from health. They were also a special group that was undergoing a double transition: the transition to adulthood and from living with their parents to living alone. Therefore, the strategy for them was derived that had to be in an indirectly and incidentally effective for health through the settlement of independent life and habit formation by transitional care as part of a nudge effect. The findings of this study can provide a basis for health and social care strategies and policies concerning young people who live alone. A follow-up study is proposed, which will involve the actualisation and application of a program based on the intervention strategy derived from these findings.

[An Exploratory Study on the Policy for Facilitating of Health Behaviors Related to Particulate Matter: Using Topic and Semantic Network Analysis of Media Text].

PURPOSE: This study aimed to analyze the mass and social media contents and structures related to particulate matter before and after the policy enforcement of the comprehensive countermeasures for particulate matter, derive nursing implications, and provide a basis for designing health policies. METHODS: After crawling online news articles and posts on social networking sites before and after policy enforcement with particulate matter as keywords, we conducted topic and semantic network analysis using TEXTOM, R, and UCINET 6. RESULTS: In topic analysis, behavior tips was the common main topic in both media before and after the policy enforcement. After the policy enforcement, influence on health disappeared from the main topics due to increased reports about reduction measures and government in mass media, whereas influence on health appeared as the main topic in social media. However semantic network analysis confirmed that social media had much number of nodes and links and lower centrality than mass media, leaving substantial information that was not organically connected and unstructured. CONCLUSION: Understanding of particulate matter policy and implications influence health, as well as gaps in the needs and use of health information, should be integrated with leadership and supports in the nurses' care of vulnerable patients and public health promotion.

[Topic Modeling and Keyword Network Analysis of News Articles Related to Nurses before and after "the Thanks to You Challenge" during the COVID-19 Pandemic].

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to assess public awareness and policy challenges faced by practicing nurses. METHODS: After collecting nurse-related news articles published before and after 'the Thanks to You Challenge' campaign (between December 31, 2019, and July 15, 2020), keywords were extracted via preprocessing. A three-step method keyword analysis, latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling, and keyword network analysis was used to examine the text and the structure of the selected news articles. RESULTS: Top 30 keywords with similar occurrences were collected before and after the campaign. The five dominant topics before the campaign were: pandemic, infection of medical staff, local transmission, medical resources, and return of overseas Koreans. After the campaign, the topics 'infection of medical staff' and 'return of overseas Koreans' disappeared, but 'the Thanks to You Challenge' emerged as a dominant topic. A keyword network analysis revealed that the word of nurse was linked with keywords like thanks and campaign, through the word of sacrifice. These words formed interrelated domains of 'the Thanks to You Challenge' topic. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study can provide useful information for understanding various issues and social perspectives on COVID-19 nursing. The major themes of news reports lagged behind the real problems faced by nurses in COVID-19 crisis. While the press tends to focus on heroism and whole society, issues and policies mutually beneficial to public and nursing need to be further explored and enhanced by nurses.

[Development and Analysis of System Dynamics Model for Predicting on the Effect of Patient Transfer Counseling with Nurses].

PURPOSE: This study aimed to construct a management model for patient transfer in a multilevel healthcare system and to predict the effect of counseling with nurses on the patient transfer process. METHODS: Data were collected from the electronic medical records of 20,400 patients using the referral system in a tertiary hospital in Seoul from May 2015 to April 2017. The data were analyzed using system dynamics methodology. RESULTS: The rates of patients who were referred to a tertiary hospital, continued treatment, and were terminated treatment at a tertiary hospital were affected by the management fee and nursing staffing in a referral center that provided patient transfer counseling. Nursing staffing in a referral center had direct influence on the range of increase or decrease in the rates, whereas the management fee had direct influence on time. They were nonlinear relations that converged the value within a certain period. CONCLUSION: The management fee and nursing staffing in a referral center affect patient transfer counseling, and can improve the patient transfer process. Our findings suggest that nurses play an important role in ensuring smooth transitions between clinics and hospitals.