The purpose of this study was to determine the significant factors for risk estimate of aspiration and to evaluate the efficiency of the dysphagia assessment tool.

A consecutive series of 210 stroke patients with aspiration symptoms such as cough and dysphagia who had soft or regular diet without tube feeding were examined. The dysphagia assessment tool for aspiration was compared with videofluoroscopy using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis.

In CART analysis, of 34 factors, the significant factors for estimating risk of aspiration were cough during swallowing, oral stasis, facial symmetry, salivary drooling, and cough after swallowing. The risk estimate error of the revised dysphagia assessment tool was 25.2%, equal to that of videofluoroscopy.

The results indicate that the dysphagia assessment tool developed and examined in this study was potentially useful in the clinical field and the primary risk estimating factor was cough during swallowing. Oral stasis, facial symmetry, salivary drooling, cough after swallowing were other significant factors, and based on these results, the dysphagia assessment tool for aspiration was revised and complemented.

The goal of this study was to evaluate the impact of life style characteristics on the prevalence risk of metabolic syndrome (MS).

A total of 581 adults were recruited from a cardiovascular outpatient clinic. A newly developed comprehensive life style evaluation tool for MS patients was used, and patient data related to the MS diagnosis were reviewed from the hospital records.

The overall prevalence of MS was 53.2%, and the mean of MS score was 2.6 for patients at a cardiovascular outpatient clinic (78% of the patients had hypertension). Dietary habits among the life style characteristics had significant influence on the prevalence risk of MS and MS scores. And also interestingly, the classification and regression tree (CART) model suggested that the high prevalence risk groups for MS were older adults (61.5≤age<79.4), and adults between 48.5 and 61.5 yr of age with bad dietary habits.

This study indicates that nurses should focus on dietary habits of patients (especially patients classified as high prevalence risk for MS) for improvement and prevention of MS prevalence risk.

The purpose of this study was to develop a stress measurement scale for Korean nursing students.

Sixty preliminary items were selected by classifying 229 basic items extracted via literature review and Q-sorting method. In order to verify the reliability and validity of the preliminary instrument, data were collected from 617 nursing students in 2 colleges of nursing in Korea.

As a result of the item analysis, 58 items were selected. They consisted of 2 types of stress which were college-based stress (38 items) and clinical-based stress (20 items). Ten factors in college-based stress and four factors in clinical-based stress were extracted by factor analysis, and each had a total variance of 63.01%, and 64.93%. Cronbach's Alpha of those 58 items were .937 in college-based stress and .922 in clinical-based stress, which was high.

This paper is meaningful in a way that it has developed a tool capable of measuring stress for nursing students, which reflects the characteristics of our country. It is recommended for further study to re-verify the relevance and stability of this measurement.