[Seoul = Healthkoreanews] Ministry of Health and Welfare started to dicuss in detail on the reshuffle plan, which emerged as a bif issue earlier this year. The ministry has a stance to discuss with as many partiteies interested as possible, but some nursing institutions are opposing fiercely causing heated controversy.
The ministry held a kik-off meeting(the first meeting) about nursing staff reshuffle cooperation body in the middle-size meeting room in the ministry, Gyedong, Jongro-gu, Seoul, at 2 o'clock 15th Nov and checked overseas cases and domestic situation. The nest meeting will be held coming 3rd Dec.
Concerning the formation of cooperation body, an official from department of medicine policy at the Ministry said, "The ministry announced last february the basic way of of nursing staff reshuffle and started to an detailed discussion through checking overseas cases and domestic situation and research. We are aiming to finalize the the start of next year."
The official said, "We are planning to discuss with varied interested parties and also hold 1st and 2nd public hearings. we came to separately discuss due to the judgement that concerned paritiea are many."
According to the ministry, the first discussion will deal with the formation of basic plan together with practice personnel from Korea Nurses Association, Korea Nursing Assistants Association, Korean Hospitals Association, Korea Medicine Association and also experts recommended by the associations. In the 2nd discusison, the object of discusiion will be expanded to civic groups and related ministries to cover the various opinions of interested parties.
But National Association of Nursing Institutions and National Nurses' Gathering shoed complaint to the formation of cooperation body.
National Nurses' Gathering urged to stop the discussion on the formation, saying "Opposing organizations have been excluded. It is to be translated that the move is a just a make-shift formation to forcibly proceed with reshuffle plan."
National Association of Nursing Institutions, 18 Nov, insisted on the nullification of the results of cooperation discussion, saying "despite the the first discussion abou the formation of cooperation body, the instituitions for educating nurses have beem excluded, which is essential to the discussion on nursing staff reshuffle.
Yhe nursinf staff reshuffle plan annouced last Feb by the ministry pivots on the idea that nusrsing assistants will be appealed and current 2-tier nursing staff system(nurse-nursing assistant)will ne replace by 3-tier system(nurse-1st -degree practicing nursing staff-2nd-degree practising nursing staff. The announcement includes the way that nursing assistants can be upgraded to nurses through career and examinations.
Concernin g the issue, the Nurses Association opposed the upgrade system while National Nurses' Gathering and Korean Hospitals Association expressed the consent to the government's basic policy.
<Republic of Korea medical journal>
