SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a major cause of death. Most of the deaths from AMI, if diagnosed and treated early enough, can be prevented. Delay in treatment may cause unnecessary exacerbation of the disease and even death in AMI patients. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: A retrospective survey was conducted to (1) investigate the delay time in AMI patients' seeking treatment from symptom onset to arrival at the first hospital (overall pre-hospital delay), the length of time taken for decision-making (patients' delay) and transport (transportation time); (2) to identify factors associated with delay times; (3) to compare delay times between the group who called 119 and the group who did not.
RESULTS
The mean of overall pre-hospital delay time was 17.42 (+/-24.03) hours and it was consisted of patients' delay, 17.07(+/-24.45), and transportation time, .84 (+/-2.34). None of socio-demographic variables such as age, sex, marital status, monthly income, education, and living environment was associated with either the patients' delay or the overall delay time. Living rural area (F=4.483, p=.016), having previous MI (F=35.252, p=.000), and other heart disease (F=69.435, p=.000) decreased transportation time; having previous heart disease decreased overall pre-hospital delay(F=4.489, p=.039); and having angina (F=92.907, p=.000) and CAD (F=9.724, p=.003) increased transportation time. Place of symptom attack, bystander, whether patients or bystander called 119, modes of transportation, intensity of pain, presence of typical chest pain and anxiety perceived by patients were not associated with any of delay times. No significant differences appeared between the group who called 119 and the group who did not in any of delay times.
CONCLUSION
AND SUGGESTIONS: Although number of patients who arrive at the hospital early enough for treatment tend to be increasing, considerable number of patients still delayed longer than desired when they experienced symptoms of AMI, and calling 119 did not diminish this delay because patients delayed mostly before they decided to call. Living urban area, having previous MI, and heart disease decreased transportation time whereas having previous heart disease decreased the overall pre-hospital delay time and having previous angina and CAD increased transportation time. Further studies to identify reasons for real late arrivals as well as public campaigns to reduce delay time in treatment are needed.

BACKGROUND: Pediatric societies throughout the world recommend breastfeeding as the optimal form of infant nutrition. This recommendation is based on extensive epidemiologic research that documents the health, developmental, psychological, social, economic, and environmental benefits to infants, mothers, families, and society. The purpose of this study was to examine breastfeeding information and emotional support received by mothers prenatally, hospital breastfeeding practices, and the relationship between information and support received and breastfeeding initiation and planned feeding method post discharge from the hospital.
METHODS
A 36-item questionnaire was distributed during the Spring 2000 to mothers who delivered babies at maternity centers in Seoul, South Korea. A sample of 52 mothers was surveyed at the time of hospital discharge. The questionnaire was developed based on the literature and reviewed by experts including internationally board certified lactation consultants, a nutritionist, and perinatal nurses. The survey instrument consists of five components: sociodemographic information, breastfeeding information received by mothers prenatally, emotional support regarding the mothers' infant feeding choice, breastfeeding initiation and supplementation, and hospital breastfeeding practices.
RESULTS
Fifty-two breastfeeding mothers at three hospitals completed the survey. The majority of the mothers were 26 to 35 years of age, college graduates, married, had uncomplicated vaginal or planned cesarean deliveries, and primiparas. Forty-nine mothers responded that they decided to breastfeed during their pregnancy. Mothers reported that the information they received during pregnancy was provided primarily by their mothers, or friends and other relatives. The majority of mothers reported that others influenced their infant-feeding decision. Forty mothers reported receiving emotional support for their infant feeding choice during their pregnancy with mothers or mothers-in-law and friends providing the greatest support.
DISCUSSION
Women obtain information prenatally about breastfeeding from many sources-family, friends, written materials, prenatal classes, and health care professionals. There are benefits and drawbacks to information received from multiple sources. Additionally, research has shown that a woman's infant-feeding decision is affected by the type of professional and social support the mother receives. Postpartum professional support for new breastfeeding mothers encompasses multiple dimensions ranging from a follow-up telephone call from the hospital nursing staff to referral to a community resource. Prenatal breastfeeding education on a community-wide basis can provide essential information for future mothers, families, and community support networks. Additional research needs to be done exploring the impact of prenatal, postpartum, and post-discharge support for women on breastfeeding initiation and duration rates.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to project supply and demand for registered nurses to the year 2015 and to make recommendations regarding nurse manpower planning for the 21st century in Korea.
METHODS
The supply of nurses was predicted using a baseline projection and demographic methods. The demand for nurses was forecasted by the derivative method.
RESULTS
Projections indicate there will be an oversupply of nurses based on the current productivity. However, there will be under-supply if predictions are based on the standard for nursing staff established by the medical law and the optimal productivity derived by the patient classification system.
CONCLUSION
Korea needs more practicing nurses. One way to increase the number of practicing nurses is to increase the number of graduates. However, considering the low retention rate of nurses, a better way to solve the nurse shortage problem is to develop strategies to recruit and retain nurses.

The purpose of this study is to provide the directions for the further development of the home care services in Korea, through comparison of the home care system and visiting nursing activities for the elderly in Japan and with those of Korea. The results of this study were summarised as follows: The major difference between the two countries was that Japan emphasised the development of home services by visiting nurse service stations (VNSS), especially in the community. In contrast, Korea has emphasised providing hospital based home care services and assuring the quality of services through the preparation of home care nurses before beginning services. And many elderly in Korea have used a public health center when they have health problems. According to the result, the establishment of a VNSS system and activation of a public health center in the community must be considered as the direction to advance home care systems for the elderly.

This cross-sectional survey was carried out to assess the decisional balance of Korean women toward mammography screening. A sample of 1, 903 naturally postmenopausal women was selected from the community-based social groups in town or city hall auxiliaries in seven metropolitan areas and six provinces in Korea. The classification of women according to the stage of adoption of mammography was 54.9% in pre-contemplation, 31.9% in contemplation, 7.8% in action, and 5.5% in maintenance. The mean differences of pros, cons, and the decisional balance by the stage of mammography adoption were statistically significant. There were significant mean differences between the stages of adoption according to a woman's experience with and intention for mammography and the pros score, the cons score, and the decisional balance score. Results provide the empirical evidence for the Transtheoretical model. An association between stages of mammography adoption and decisional balance exists.

This research was performed to investigate the effectiveness of self-esteem promotion program(SEPP) to adolescents with minor delinquency on self-esteem and mental health. Samples of this study were 36 adolescents with signs of minor delinquency in the third grade of middle schools who reside in K city. Data analysis was conducted by chi-square test which tests the general homogeneity between the experiment group and the control group. To test hypothesis how SEPP affects on self-esteem, mental health, and delinquency, paired t-test was performed. The results were summarized as follow; 1. After the experimental treatment, self-esteem score was not statistically significant. 2. After the experimental treatment, mental health score was statistically significant. 3. After the experimental treatment, self reported delinquency score was statistically significant. As the result of this research, the SEPP increased the degree of mental health and decreased that of delinquency of the adolescents who committed minor delinquency. Self-esteem is difficult to be changed by itself in number for a short time, but there is potential effect, which can be expected the preceding changes of mental health and behavior of participants.

The incidence of reported acute pain is still high which indicates a lack of knowledge in clinical pain assessment and management. This study was carried out to investigate strategies of post-operative pain assessment in terms of patterns of criteria adopted and how these are influenced by prior experience. The research approach, phenomenography, was adopted in data analysis. The subjects of this study consisted of 10 nurses from post-operative care units from a University Hospital in Seoul, Korea. Findings revealed that the nurses mostly relied on "how it usually is" and "how the patient looks" as strategies of post operative pain assessment and "I have learned the typology of patients" as a frame of reference of post operative assessment.

The purpose of this study is to seek the nursing intervention for the elderly people's positive lives by investigating the causes for their loss and its meanings. The method of this research derives from a phenomenological tool as a qualitative research design. The data collection had been performed from February, 2001 until August, 2001 through systematic interviews and participatory observations of six elderly people (4 elderly women and 2 elderly men) residing in downtown Seoul. It took one and a half hour for each interview arranged five times. The analysis of this research is based upon Giorgi method and the research results on the causes for elderly people's sense of loss and its meaning are as follows. 1) bitter disappointment of family members : unfaithful children, husband's infidelity, conflict with daughter-inlaw, economic hardships. 2) bereavement : loss of spouse or children, a sense of one's own mortality. 3) regret for the past : sorrowful things, unfair treatment, a sense of resentment, a sense of futility, a feeling of helplessness, despair, resignation. 4) unpleasant memories of others : hurt of self-esteem, hostile feelings aroused by betrayal or distrust. 5) grief of lost youth : loss of health, hard married life, unlucky fate. 6) sense of another superable life : regret, awareness, maturity through suffering. As a person ages, the number of deaths of close friends and family members usually increases. The occurrence of such multiple losses can cause the elderly to become overwhelmed by the events. Care givers need to be sensitive to these losses and need to be aware that the elderly can experience an overload of grief. Counselling can often be useful in helping them to come to terms with such multiple losses.

Cost effectiveness is a recent and newly emerging approach in nursing evaluation studies. Nursing is in a unique position among health care providers to respond to these efforts and is ready to provide evidence of its cost-effectiveness because nurses has long advocated a holistic view of patient care, that means, nurses are unique position to identify the full range of costs and effects. The cumulative evidence showed that nurses provided cost-effective care that substituted for physician services in many situations and new and important services in long-term care and nursing homes. The purpose of this article is to review, critique, and synthesize research on the cost-effectiveness of nursing care from the research methodology perspective. Two major problems are apparent from this review. First, there is no uniform approach to identifying and valuing resources used in producing nursing intervention options. Second, although it is not difficult to find reports of cost savings, the cost to effect ratio was not used to evaluate the relationship between the cost and effects of alternative options. Based on my analysis, the nursing CEA literature seemed to have huge variation in methods, so that it is not easy to compare the CEA methods among studies. There are still such methodological problems as we found in the literature review. Many of the studies reviewed here would have profited from improved designs. Therefore, future cost-effectiveness analyses should include methodological progress in the context of nursing area application such as the definition and quantification of multi-attribute effectiveness measures, employment of sensitivity analysis, a concept of discount. Nurse and nurse researchers should consider cost-effectiveness questions when addressing other research questions. Because these efforts are forcing policy makers to consider the economics of nursing, nurses should demonstrate and document the value of nursing as compared to other uses of society's health care resources.

The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between self-efficacy and self -regulation behavior in obese college women. Subjects included 52 college women with a Body Mass Index (BMI) score above 25 at Gwang Ju Women's University. Data was analyzed using SPSS/PC. The frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson Correlation Coefficient tests were used to describe the data and for statistical comparisons. Results of this study showed that the mean scores for general self-efficacy and specific self-efficacy of obese college women were 3.37(1 to 5 point scale) and 60.16 (10 to 100 point scale) respectively. Significant differences for general and specific self-efficacy based on economic status were seen. The mean score for self-regulation behavior of obese college women was 2.55(1 to 5 point scale) with significant differences seen for both economic status and obesity of the mother. General self-efficacy was positively correlated with specific self-efficacy (P=.009) and specific self-efficacy with self-regulation behavior (P=.000). This study revealed the level of self-efficacy and self-regulation behavior, and the positive correlation between specific self-efficacy and self-regulation behavior in obese college women. Intervention is needed to promote selfefficacy for self-regulation behavior of obese college women. Further research needs to focus on the role of health promotion, diet and stress management in developing self-efficacy programs for obese college women.

No abstract available.