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Aims and Objectives: The aims of this study were to measure skin moisture and transepidermal water loss after application of uncoated paper and to compare skin moisture and transepidermal water loss after use of uncoated paper and disposable underpads., Study Design: The study was a cross-over, prospective, open-labeled, randomized trial., Sample and Setting: Bedridden patients aged≥18 years at a medical center in Korea were included. Treatment order was randomly assigned using block randomization, with a block size of 4 and an assignment rate of one-by-one., Methods: Skin moisture was measured using a Corneometer 825 and transepidermal water loss was measured using a Tewameter 300., Results: Skin moisture after application of an uncoated paper was significantly lower than observed after application of a disposable underpad (mean 40.6 and SD 13.1 vs. mean 64.6 and SD 23.7, p<0.001). Transepidermal water loss also showed greater health scores after using uncoated paper (mean 11.1 and SD 5.7 g/m2/hour) than after applying a disposable underpad (mean 23.2 and SD 11.1 g/m2 /hour, p<0.001). There were no statistical between-group differences in room temperature, relative humidity, and body temperature., Conclusion: We found that uncoated paper was helpful in avoiding excessive moisture without adverse effects., Relevance to Clinical Practice: As indicated by the results of this study, uncoated paper can be applied to bed-ridden patients who required incontinence care. Nurses may consider using uncoated paper as one of nursing methods in the routine care of bed-ridden patients for moisture control., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

The introduction of an electronic medical record (EMR) has been rapidly accelerating in South Korea. The EMR was expected to improve quality of care, readability, availability, and the quality of data. However, the reluctance of healthcare providers to use the EMR may have caused a reduction of information recorded in EMRs. The purpose of this study was to identify whether there was any loss of information following the introduction of a narrative text-based EMR in the recording of chief complaint and present illness in inpatient medical records. Inpatient medical records of a university hospital were retrospectively evaluated for one month before and one month after the introduction of the EMR in June 2006. The volume of information for chief complaint and present illness was measured by number of words in Korean and normalised bytes. Change in volume of information was measured by two-way ANOVA and multiple regression analyses, controlling for doctors' gender, age, and grade/year of residents, patients' readmission status, reasons for admission and service department to assess any effect of the introduction of an EMR. Total numbers of paper-based medical records (PMRs) and EMRs for analysis were 1,159 and 1,122, respectively. Forty-three doctors participated in the study. Thirty-one (72%) doctors were less than 30 years of age. Number of words proved a better outcome measure (R²=22 for CC, R²=36 for PI) than normalised bytes (R²=18 for CC, R²=35 for PI) for measuring volume of information. Results showed that the volume of information in the chief complaint and present illness was not decreased after the introduction of the EMR, except when the dependent variable was measured by number of words in the present illness. The study showed that the introduction of the EMR did not reduce the volume of information documented for chief complaint and present illness in inpatient medical records. However, further studies are needed to identify how to control the probable loss of information as showed in present illness measured by number of words.