Abstract

To analyze the distribution and functions of nurses in nationwide local societies, this study was conducted from February 1986 to December 1988 by 0 researchers on 36 investigation units with four categories of nursing personnel including public health nurses, community health practitioners, school health teachers, and occupational health nurses working for industries from 9 regions. The results of this study can be summarized roughly as follows. 1. The total number of Korea's local society nurses was 10,734 including 4,311 public health nurses for public health centers, 2,038 community health practitioners for health clinics, 3,223 health teachers for schools, and 1,162 occupational health nurses for industries. 2. The region based distribution of local society nurses shows that bigger cities have more nurses but the number of their nurses per population is small. 3. As for the number of people per local society nurse, one public health nurse is in charge of 11,759 local people, one community health practitioner 1,875 people, one health teacher 1,733 students, and one occupational health nurse 1,766 workers. Thus, one local society nurse is in charge of about 1,700 persons in all the fields and one health nurse about 10,000. 4. The number of patients cared by one local society nurse is about 8~9. 5. Health problems dealt with by local society nurses include ones frequently seen among common people such as mother-child health (MCH), family planning, tuberculosis, and epidemic control in the case of public health nurses, as well as stomachache, duodenal ulcer, upper airway infection, skin symptoms, mother-child health, environmental sanitation etc. in the case of health teachers, community health practitioners, and industrial nurses. 6. As for jobs done by local society nurses, only public health nurses addressed several special duties ordered by the government including clarification of problems with public MCH services, family planning, tuberculosis treatment services, and epidemic control, as well as health education and administrative jobs, while health teachers, community health practitioners, and industrial nurses diagnosed people in their regions, schools, and industries, based on which they made plans and carried out them, and dealt with human health care, health education, environmental sanitation management, and running health organizations and centers (health clinics, school infirmaries, and medical rooms). Based on the results of this study so far, we can conclude that there are about 10,700 local society nurses in Korea, and each of them is in charge of about 1,700 people with about 10 patients cared a day by one nurse. They nurse patients on the base of their symptoms, diagnose local society residents through travelling, visiting, development and running of local society health organizations, make plans, care their populations' health, and carry out health education and environmental sanitation jobs.