언론사

Why is nursing necessary? Nursing Practice and Results

The CheongDae Times Senior reporter Jin-won Seo.

Recently, there have been many articles on nursing laws in the news. If you look at news articles related to nursing law, you can see that each medical community, such as the Nurses Association and the Medical Association, is arguing. What does the nursing law contain to become such a hot potato?

Let's take a look at the background of the proposed enactment of the Nursing Law. Until now, Korea has legally determined the role of medical personnel in the "Medical law" enacted during the Japanese colonial period. The 'Medical law' does not provide a clear role for each doctor and nurse. The role of nurses defined in Article 2, Paragraph 2, Item 5 of the Medical law is an assistant to medical treatment conducted under the guidance of doctors, dentists, and oriental doctors. The unclear content of the word ‘guidance’ doesn’t consider subdivided medical sites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqtRxE29AzQ

Nurses are doing more than what nurses have to do in the actual medical field. For example, currently in Korea, there is an average of 16.3 patients per nurse.



Nurses are caring for so many patients that they don't even have enough time to have a meal. Due to excessive work, new nurses don’t work for more than 5 years. As of 2021, the retirement rate within five years is 49.9%. It is a paradox that nursing jobs with a high employment rate also have a high resignation rate.

https://blog.naver.com/cskw11/222857771791

Through this COVID-19 incident, the need for nurses has increased. In addition, as Korea becomes an aging society and the number of patients with chronic diseases increases, the need for nursing personnel is expected to increase steadily in the medical field.



In order to secure skilled nurses, the working environment of nurses must be improved. That is why nursing is necessary. If the nursing law is enacted, it can refuse unfair work by accurately defining the area of work of nurses.



And it can prevent excessive work by setting the number of patients per person. In addition to Korea, nursing laws have already been enacted in 90 countries. There are 60 countries that have enacted the Nurses’ law and the Doctors' law, respectively.

https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/032/0002812491

Then, why do the Medical Association and the Nursing Assistant Association oppose the nursing law? The Medical Association argues that "local nursing" stipulated in the Nursing law creates the possibility that nurses can open a single hospital without a doctor, which violates the area of the primary hospital.



The Nursing Assistant Association argues that in local hospitals within the Nursing law, nursing assistants are violated by the provision that they follow the instructions of nurses. For this reason, each medical organization is in conflict with the nurse.

On Friday, May 12, an International Nurses' Day event was held in Gwanghwamun. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean Nursing Association, and it was a more meaningful event because the Nursing Law passed the National Assembly this year.



Nurses and nursing students from Seoul, Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Chungcheong, Jeolla, Gyeongsang, and Jeju gathered, and many nurses and student nurses agreed to appeal for the enforcement of the nursing law.

https://www.rapportian.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=160806

On May 16, the government vetoed the Nursing Law. It was a moment when 240,000 nurses' wishes were rejected. In response, the Nurses Association began a law-abiding struggle.



They returned their nurse's licenses and started to report things that were not the nurse's work that nurses had to do because of the doctor's instructions. For five days from 4:20 p.m. on May 18th to 4:00 p.m. on the 23rd, the number of illegal treatments anonymously received at the illegal treatment reporting center was 12,189.

https://www.joongang.co.kr/article/25164990

Why did nurses have to do illegal medical treatment until now? According to the survey, 2,925 cases (31.7%) of “There's no one who can do it instead”, 2,648 cases (28.7%) of “because of vertical relationship with the doctor”, 1,919 cases (20.8%) of “for the patients, and because of custom’ and 1,735 cases (18.8%) of "because of employment threats".

Until now, nurses have performed tasks other than nursing tasks prescribed by law for various reasons. For this reason, the work of nurses was inevitably more difficult, and many nurses have been required to solve these problems. However, countrywide nurses are angry, because the government exercised its right to veto nursing laws without improving the poor conditions of nurses.

Unless the environment of nurses is improved and the nursing law is enacted, the nursing law will continue to be a "hot potato" in the medical community.