The purpose of this study was to identity the effects of a health promotion program for rural elderly on health promotion lifestyle and health status.

The study was a nonequivalent control group pre-post experimental design. Data collection was performed from April 12th, 2003 to August 2nd, 2003. The subjects were selected at Mari Myun Geochang Gun in Korea. 44 elders were in the experimental group and 45 elders were in the control group. The 16-week health promotion program was given to the experimental group. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics, χ²-test, t-test, and ANCOVA test with SPSS/Win 10.0 program.

The experimental group showed higher scores of a health promotion lifestyle and perceived health status than the control group. In addition, systolic BP, heart rate, body fat and glucose of the experimental group were lower than the control group. Waist flexibility, left hand grip power, back strength and leg strength of the experimental group were higher than the control group. However, there were no significant differences in diastolic BP, total cholesterol and right hand grip power between the two groups.

This health promotion program for rural elderly can be recommended as an effective nursing intervention in rural communities.

This study was to examine the effects of hand massage and hand holding as nursing interventions on the anxiety in patients with local infiltration anesthesia.

The design of this study was a nonequivalent, control group, non- synchronized design. The subjects of this study consisted of 15 patients for the hand group, 15 patients for the hand holding group and 17 patients for the control group awaiting surgery in the operation room of a general hospitalin Daegu. As an experimental treatment, hand massage was carried out by the Hand Massage Protocol developed by Snyder(1995) and interpreted by Cho(1998) and hand holding developed by Cho(1998). The data were analyzed by SPSS/WIN, T-test, ANOVA, Cronbach's α, and the Scheffe test.

The hand massage group and hand holding group were more effective than the control group in reducing anxiety, VAS score, systolic blood pressure and pulse rate.

Hand massage and hand holding are effective nursing interventions that alleviates the psychological and physiological anxiety of patients with local infiltration anesthesia. In particular, the simple contact of hand holding is regarded as an effective and easily accessible nursing intervention in the operating room.