BackgroundIn the 1990s the primary focus of medicine was shifted to disease prevention. Accordingly, it became the responsibility of primary-care physicians to educate and counsel the general population not only on disease prevention specifically but health promotion generally as well. Moreover, it was, and is still today, considered important that physicians provide positive examples of health-promotion behaviors to patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate physicians' health-promotion behaviors and to identify the factors that influence them.MethodsWe conducted a postal and e-mail survey of the 371 members of the Physician Association of Cheonan City between May 16th and June 25th, 2011. The questionnaire consisted of 18 items, including questions relating to sociodemographic factors, screening tests for adult diseases and cancer, and health habits.ResultsThere were 127 respondents. The gender breakdown was 112 men (88.2%) and 15 women (11.8%), and the mean age was 47.8 years. Fifty-nine (46.4%) were family physicians or interns, and 68 (53.6%) were surgeons. Twenty-six percent (26%) were smokers, and 74.8% were drinkers; 53.5% did exercise; 37% had chronic diseases; 44.9% took periodic cancer screening tests, and 72.4% took periodic screening tests for adult diseases.ConclusionIt was found that general characteristics and other health-promotion behaviors of physicians do not affect physicians' practice of undergoing periodic health examination.

Applications of red and near infrared LED light with diverse pulsing frequencies over the head and on the nose were proven effective in improving the cognitive capability of the Alzheimer's disease patients. A protocol for clinical trial for the patients with Alzheimer's disease using flexible LED photobiomodulation therapy devices with 660nm, 850nm, and 940nm LEDs over the head, nose, neck, and abdominal area with 40Hz light pulsing frequency is described for this case study.

While ethical issues in medical practice are receiving a great deal of attention these days from professionals within the medical community, relatively little attention has so far been paid to patients perceptions of these ethical issues. For this reason, we performed an on-line survey of patients perspectives on ethical issues. Structured and unstructured questions were posted on a medical information home page (http://www.hospital.co.kr), and information was then collected from 158 respondents. The collected information included the respondents' demographics and data from self-administered questionnaires, which asked patients for their views on abortion, new drug trials, and organ transplantation. The respondents were also asked to describe any personal experiences they had of unethical behaviour in a hospital or a clinic. The collected data shows that the issue that patients regard over-treatment as the most common ethical problem in medical practice. Other frequently mentioned problems are treatment refusal, equality, bribery, sex pre-selection, and artificial abortion. Approximately 48% of the respondents replied that they regarded artificial abortion as murder, and 62% of the respondents answered that selling a person's living organs for transplantation should be allowed. About 77% of respondents were willing to participate in new drug trials if they had fatal diseases, but only 43% would do so if they were in good health. We undertook a qualitative analysis for 58 unstructured answers out of the 158 respondents. We grouped the respondents into two major categories : i) those with perceptions of ethical problems arising from patient-doctor relationships, and ii) those with perceptions of ethical problems arising from health care systems. In the first category, negligent attitudes on the part of doctors was the most frequently reported item, while over-treatment and the abuse of laboratory tests was the second most prevalent item. In the second category, the policy of pay-before-treatment in emergency rooms was the most common complaint. The results of (his study suggest that patients are more concerned with patient-doctor relationships and doctors' communication skills than with other ethical issues in medical practice. Therefore, we believe that these issues ought to occupy a greater portion of the ethical curriculum for medical students.

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