Background
: For people who have high risk diseases or who are aged 65 years or more, routine influenza vaccination is required. However, in Korea, influenza vaccination rate of such people is low. We performed a study to assess the effectiveness of physician reminder in improving the rate of recommending influenza vaccination.

Methods : Among the patients who registered to tertiary care hospital family clinic center, 305 patients with diabetes mellitus or aged 65 years or more were randomly assigned into physician reminder group and control group. After excluding the patients who were vaccinated before the medical consultation or who did not attend the clinic, remaining 253 patients were included as final study subjects. For the physician reminder group, a sticker showing that influenza vaccination was needed was placed on each medical record. Demographic and clinical characteristics, recommendation of vaccination by physician, and the receipt of vaccination were checked through self-administered questionnaires, review of medical chart and order communication system, and telephone interview.

Results : The rates of recommending vaccination in the physician reminder group and the control group were 36% and 29.7%, respectively. The difference between the two groups was not significant. Vaccination rate in patients for whom influenza vaccination was recommended by their physician was 87.0%, whereas those for whom vaccination was not recommended was only 41.2%.

Conclusion : Physician reminder for influenza vaccination was not effective in this study. However, the physician's recommendation was effective in improving the influenza vaccination rate. Effective strategies will be needed to encourage physicians to recommend influenza vaccination.

Background
: A prospective study about the association between serum ferritin concentration and diabetes mellitus showed that higher risk of diabetes was found in men in higher concentration of serum ferritin. The aims of this study is to examine the association between serum ferritin concentration and the risk of diabetes mellitus in healthy Korean in hospital-based samples.

Methods : In a volunteered healthy population(n=14.782), who underwent health examination in Samsung Medical Center, from January to December 1997, serum ferritin and glucose were determined.

Results : After adjusting for age, BMI, serum triglyceride concentration, and multiple logistic regression analysis showed that those in the highest quartile had increased risk of diabetes mellitus (OR: men 2.26(95% CI 2.41-2.95, p=0.0001), women 3.03(95% CI 2.51-3.67, p=0.0001), compared with those in the lowest quartile.

Conclusion : In studied population, elevated serum ferritin concentration was associated with an increased risk of diabetes.

Background
: The present it is getting to be on aged society there is increasing that hospital has higher rate for place of death than home. Because we can expect that many patients who are faced with death come to hospital or hospice in the future, we have studied preferred place of death with an old women in seoul to have essential material of plan to understand asking for medical service of death, to divide medical manpowers and equipments and to supplement and to revise of medical educations.

Methods : Through the internet, 71 schools for the elderly . Of 277 an old woman who attending the schools out of 7 schools. We research into preferred place of death by self answering way through the June to July in 2000.

Results : The average age was 72.4 years. Of 277 respondents, 87 respondents(32.46%), reply their homes as a place of death and 166(61.94%) reply hospital, 15(6.5%) reply hospice, missing is 9. Statistical significance has connections with only level of education. The highest reason(47.5%) why respondents choose the hospital or hospice is only to reduce their children’s burdens. Unlike respondents that education attending period is below 6-year, the relative risk of choosing the hospital or hospice between respondents who are 6-9year and above 9-year is each of 3.66, 5.58.

Conclusion : This research shows that an elderly women I seoul prefer hospitals or hospice to homes as their place of death.