Current Status of Regional Health Inequalities and Policy Tasks: Focusing on the Utilization of Registered Nurses
This study was conducted to understand the current status of regional health inequalities and nurse supply and demand policies, and to suggest ways to supply nurses to regions where nurses are scarce. Secondary data such as academic papers, government announcements, and related laws were analyzed, and the results were reviewed from various perspectives to derive policy proposals. Health professions were distributed around large cities including Seoul, and those regions had relatively high health levels. However, the number of hospital beds increased steadily, mainly in the non-metropolitan area. This seems to be one of the reasons why there is always a shortage of nurses in the local medical field despite the supply of nurses, and it can be a factor that aggravates regional inequalities. In order to solve the chronic shortage of nurses, supply-oriented policies such as increasing the admission quota and utilizing inactive nurses, and demand-oriented policies such as regulations on the nurse staffing level and improvement of the incentive scheme for quality evaluation of hospital service have been implemented. In the past, the focus was simply on the quantitative expansion of nurses, but recently, policies that emphasize the qualitative aspect of nursing are being promoted. However, the policy for the distribution aspect of nurses is still somewhat incomplete. Therefore, to solve this problem, strengthening the nurse staffing level in medical institutions, promoting nursing policies led by local governments, developing standard wage guidelines, and training nurses as public health personnel were proposed.