KOREASCHOLAR

With increases in senior citizens and changes in family structure, the need for long-term care system for elderly is increasing, however, the capacity and environment of Korean facilities are very limited. Health and nutritional status of long-term care residents are worse than free-living elderly. In this study, general food service management and health care practices in long-term care systems were investigated. Questionnaire were sent to the directors of all 162 long-term care facilities in Korea and 81 returned the complete answers. The results showed 1) There are slow but steady increase in long-term care systems in Korea, however, the capacity is far from adequate. Less than 10,000 elderly were resided in the facilities. Most of the systems were free-nursing homes and supported by the goverment. Staffing structure revealed that most of the facilities had a director, a secretary, nurses, but only 21% of the systerm hired a dietitian. It showed the shortage of nurses, physical therapists, and dietitians. Therefore, food purchasing, menu planning, food delivery, and the other food service management processes are handled by non-professionals, such as director, secretary, or cooks. Modified fool frequency questionnaire were used to get the frequencies of each food items used in menu and a menu-analysis was made on the one-day menu provided by the facilities. The results showed relatively satisfactory in nutrients content and food frequencies., however, this was about what was used in menu, not what was eaten by the residents. Therefore this results did not tell that the food intake status of individuals. In most facilities general health checkup was done on a regular basis, and had residents with various chronic degenerative diseases, such as hypertension, neuralgia, stroke, arthritis, diabetes. But the items checked on health checkup included weight, height, blood and urine tests, X-ray test, which suggested that the checkup lists should be revised to accomodate the health problem of the aged today.

• 김화영 | Kim, Wha-Young
• 양은주 | Yang, Eun-Ju
• 원혜숙 | Won, Hye-Suk