A survey of private physician's opinion on utilization of nursing manpower

간호사 및 간호조무사 활용에 관한 개업의사의 의견조사

The medical insurance system has been adopted in 1989. Since then, the utilization of medical care services has increased rapidly. It appears that the medical institution needs more nursing manpower such as nurses and nurse aides to meet an increased demand for medical care for the residents. However, the medical care clinics run by a medical practitioners has a more shortage of nursing manpower than hospitals. The purpose of this survey was to analyze the current employment status and to obtain an opinion on the improvement of utilization such as recruitment and retention of nursing manpower. The questionnaire sent to the private physician and the response rate was 28.7% ; 87 out of 300 physicians. 82.6% of the respondents employed nurses aides rather than nurses and an average number of employees per clinic was 2.5 persons. Most physicians had difficulties in recruiting nursing manpower. It took more than one month for replacement on average, therefore, they were suffering from giving good continual care for the patient and also high resignation of nursing personnel. The low wage, long working hours, hard work and lack of incentives are the biggest reasons for the difficulty in recruiting and retaining of the nursing personnel obtained for the clinics survey. The above mentioned problems would be solved in the near future by changing those difficulties. In the meantime, the private physicians are marking an effort to retain the nursing personnel by keeping a relationship of the private physician's cooperatives.