Purpose: This study aimed to explore the meaning and essence of operating room nurses’ role transitions to surgical assistant nurses during a resident strike. Methods: The participants were 15 nurses working at three tertiary hospitals in the metropolitan area who transitioned from operating room nurses because of the gap in medical manpower caused by the suspension of resident duties. Data were collected through individual in-depth interviews conducted from March 6 to May 9, 2025, and analyzed using Colaizzi’s phenomenological method. Results: The study identified 34 themes, grouped into 12 theme clusters and 5 categories. The five categories were: ‘‘First steps toward a new role’’, ‘‘Hardship and coping during the initial role adaptation process’’, ‘‘Confusion of the boundary between two fields’’, ‘‘Professional growth and stabilization as a surgical assistant nurses’’, and ‘‘Institutional support for the New Normal’’. Conclusion: In the unprecedented crisis of a mass resident strike, participants leveraged their extensive experience as operating room nurses to transition into surgical assistant (SA) roles. Despite their complete lack of systematic education, they demonstrated resilience through self-directed learning and relentless effort, eventually earning clinical credibility as essential team members. A distinct phenomenon emerged compared to the previous resident-led system: supported by ‘‘Bang-jang’’ nurses and their own proactive communication across multidisciplinary departments, these SA nurses ensured the delivery of high-quality surgical care. Consequently, they accepted the ‘‘New Normal’’—a state in which the once abnormal reliance on SA nurses has stabilized into a functional new structure for surgical continuity. However, for this New Normal to be firmly established, participants emphasized the urgent need for a systematic educational roadmap and a career-based compensation system. This study provides an evidence basis for developing institutional frameworks to certify professional expertise, define a clear scope of practice, and establish legal accountability guidelines.

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the experiences and perceptions of emergency department (ED) nurses regarding the provision of oral care for patients. Oral care, which is essential for preventing complications such as pneumonia, is often undervalued in ED compared to acute nursing interventions. This study identified the internal and external factors influencing the delivery of oral care to provide evidence-based recommendations for improving nursing practice in high-acuity settings. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted using focus-group interviews. Twenty registered nurses with at least one year of ED experience were recruited from a tertiary general hospital. Data were collected from four separate focus groups through semi-structured interviews. The transcribed data were analyzed using conventional content analysis. To ensure rigor, this study followed Lincoln and Guba’s criteria for credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board, and informed consent was obtained from all participants. Results: The analysis yielded 197 meaningful statements, that were categorized into five main themes and thirteen subthemes. (1) Emotional fulfillment: Nurses experienced professional pride, emotional satisfaction, and improved communication with patients and guardians after providing oral care. (2) Decreased intention due to negative experiences: Participants expressed considerable anxiety about unintentional harm, such as mucosal bleeding, aspiration, or physical injury, when patients bit their fingers. (3) Lower priority: Oral care was perceived as a time-intensive task that was often deprioritized owing to life-saving emergencies in high-pressure ED environments. (4) Areas for improvement in high-quality oral care: Nurses highlighted the lack of formal training and specialized tools, emphasizing that standardized guidelines are essential for confident practices. Conclusion: This study identified the internal and external factors that could influence emergency nurses' provision of oral care. The intrinsic satisfaction gained when providing oral care and the positive feedback received from patients are likely to enhance oral care. Conversely, internal conflicts regarding potential harm and negative reactions were identified as factors that could reduce the intention to provide oral care. Providing external support, such as oral care guidelines, education, and appropriate tools, can enhance emergency nurses' intrinsic motivation to provide oral care. To bridge the gap between perception and practice, oral care should be integrated into emergency assessment frameworks such as the airway, breathing, and circulation (ABC) sequence. Implementing simulation-based education may reduce fear of complications, and the provision of specialized suction devices may enhance safety. These findings provide a basis for the development of ED-specific oral care protocols that prioritize infection control and broaden the scope of comprehensive emergency nursing.

Purpose: This qualitative study explored multi-level factors determining the implementation of conservative urinary incontinence (UI) management in Korean long-term care hospitals, where practice frequently remains centered on routine absorbent-product application. Conservative management was defined as individualized, non-surgical approaches (e.g., tailored toileting plans, bladder training, timed voiding, intermittent catheterization when indicated, and diaper-free (toilet-based) activities) aimed at preserving patients’ residual function and dignity. Methods: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 registered nurses, recruited through purposive and snowball sampling, from eight long-term care hospitals. To elicit insights into established organizational routines and clinical decision-making, participation was limited to nurses with at least three years of experience in long-term care settings. Interviews were conducted between February and May 2020 (face-to-face, n=9; telephone, n=4) and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed applying Elo and Kyngäs’s inductive qualitative content analysis, progressing through preparation, organizing, and reporting phases to derive codes, subcategories, and overarching categories. Results: Three main categories, nine subcategories, and 19 codes were identified. First, “Physical and Human Resource Constraints” served as major barriers; high workload, chronic shortage of caregiving staff, limited access to urology specialists and equipment, spatial constraints, and insufficient continence-care training often necessitated time-scheduled diaper changes over individualized care. Second, “Dilemmas in Implementing Incontinence Care” reflected barriers such as the misalignment between accreditation standards and clinical reality, symbolic compliance with government-led initiatives, and tensions between bladder training and fall prevention. Third, “Experience of Incontinence Care” encompassed both barriers (e.g., a routine preference for indwelling catheters and the delegation of continence monitoring to caregivers) and facilitators (e.g., a dignity-centered mindset and ward-level nursing leadership). Overall, structural barriers included staffing shortage, spatial constraints, and policy-practice misalignment promoting efficiency-driven routines and framed UI care as hygiene work. However, facilitators such as proactive leadership and a dignity-oriented perspective enabled the sustainability of conservative continence care by redistributing staff tasks and prioritizing functional preservation despite structural constraints. Conclusion: Conservative UI management in Korean long-term care hospitals is influenced by a complex interplay of staffing constraints, reimbursement structures, and leadership-led workflows. Improving the quality of UI care requires aligning policy incentives with patient-centered outcomes and promoting the nursing workforce’s assessment capacity. This study provides a foundational understanding for developing institutional protocols that support individualized, dignity-oriented conservative UI management in long-term care settings.

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the meaning of the process of occupational identity formation among adults discharged from childcare facilities through their personal experiences. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with nine participants selected through purposive sampling, and the collected data were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Results: Eight major themes and 29 subthemes were identified through an in-depth analysis of meaningful statements from the participants. The themes were “Admission Linked to Institutional Care Following Separation from Parents”, “Perpetual Self-Questioning: Who Am I?”, “Unprepared Career Choices Made Out of Necessity”, “A Journey of Building Occupational Identity Through Feasible Options”, “Influence of Unpredictable Environments”, “Expanding the Spectrum of Life Through the Driving Force of Occupational Engagement”, “Achieving Continuity in a Fragmented Life Through Occupation” and “Dynamically Developing Occupational Identity”. Participants entered adulthood with vulnerable inner selves and viewed their circumstances through a framework of defects and deficiencies. The participants presented themselves as questioners of their own identity, prioritizing housing and financial issues upon discharge. They chose their career paths within the limited constraints of prioritizing housing and financial security upon discharge. They faced challenges in their professional journeys due to a lack of diverse coping skills, confidence, and family life experiences. They also experienced the prejudice and discrimination that they experienced as children resurfacing in the workplace. After experiencing financial stability, they transitioned to careers based on their life goals and aspirations, forming occupational identities. The driving forces behind career success were as follows: (1) grit through perseverance and hard work, (2) personal networks and social support, and (3) a willingness to solve problems and altruism. Conclusion: For participants who faced the choice between entering and leaving care facilities without a true sense of choice, work became a starting point for self-directed living and a means of integrating the meaning and purpose of their childhood experiences. This study is significant because it illuminates the resources and capacities of those leaving care facilities, provides a concrete case of how their occupational identity develops over time, and explores the alignment between work and life purpose. However, given the limited sample size, further research with a broader sample is recommended.

Purpose: This study aims to generate an integrated understanding of nurses’ emotional labor by synthesizing qualitative evidence and proposing implications for practice and organizational support. Methods: A qualitative metasynthesis was conducted using a meta-ethnographic approach informed by Noblit and Hare’s interpretive synthesis method. Six qualitative studies exploring nurses’ experiences of emotional labor in South Korea were synthesized across diverse practice contexts, including inpatient wards, outpatient clinics, emergency departments, and community-based visiting nursing. Findings from each study were repeatedly read, compared, and translated into one another to identify shared meanings and higher-order interpretations, resulting in synthesized themes and an overarching line of argument. Results: Four themes were identified: First, nurses calibrated emotional expressions between standardized expectations of kindness and professional identity and routinely managed emotional displays to sustain care, education, coordination, and mediation roles. Second, emotional labor extended beyond emotion management to situational control under asymmetric power dynamics and safety threats, including verbal abuse, intimidation, sexual harassment, and context-specific risks such as solitary home visits. Third, isolation and work intensification accelerated burnout, as chronic understaffing, time pressure, ambiguous role boundaries, and insufficient managerial mediation accumulated unresolved emotional strain, contributing to withdrawal and turnover intentions. Fourth, nurses reconstructed professionalism through meaning-making and recovery resources, drawing on patient appreciation, professional pride, peer support, cognitive reappraisal, and experiential learning; however, personal coping had limited capacity to offset structural hazards. Across themes, the core experience involved enduring and regulating emotions to preserve professionalism amid unstable, conflict-prone interactions. Conclusion: Nurses’ emotional labor is a relational and structural phenomenon shaped by service norms, organizational metrics, workplace safety conditions, staffing and workload realities, and hierarchical culture. Interventions should move beyond individual-level training to multilevel strategies, including clarifying role boundaries and response standards, institutionalizing violence prevention and rapid support systems, redesigning staffing and workflow, strengthening supportive leadership and peer debriefing, and embedding accessible recovery resources within organizations.

Purpose: This study aims to systematically analyze research trends concerning non-verbal communication within the field of Korean language education from a teaching and learning perspective, utilizing a scoping review methodology. By comprehensively synthesizing how non-verbal communication has been conceptualized and educationally applied in the context of Korean language pedagogy, this study seeks to map the existing research landscape. Furthermore, it aims to identify potential areas for future expansion and identify the current research gaps that require scholarly attention. Methods: This study was conducted based on the scoping review framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley and further refined by Levac et al. The analysis targeted academic journal articles published between 2002 and February 2026, specifically focusing on those indexed in the Korea Citation Index (KCI) as accredited or candidate journals. An initial search yielded a total of 355 records. Following a multi-stage screening process governed by predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 23 articles were selected for final analysis. The selected literature was systematically coded and categorized based on the year of publication, research participants, research design, specific non-verbal communication elements addressed, and five distinct categories of teaching and learning research (T1-T5). Results: The analysis of research types revealed that the "Instructional proposal type" (T1) constituted the largest proportion, with 15 articles (65.2%). This was followed by the "Perception type" (T5) with 5 articles (21.7%), the "Learning performance type" (T2) with 2 articles (8.7%), and the "Assessment and feedback type" (T4) with 1 article(4.3%). Notably, no studies were identified within the "Verification of intervention effectiveness" (T3) (0%). Regarding the specific non-verbal communication elements addressed, body movements (21 articles), gestures (21 articles), and hand signals (19 articles) were the most frequently discussed. By contrast, elements such as posture (11 articles), gaze (14 articles), and facial expressions (13 articles) were examined relatively less frequently across the sampled literature. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that while non-verbal communication research in Korean language education is successfully transitioning from conceptual discourse to practical instructional applications, a sufficient accumulation of systematic empirical evidence is still lacking. Accordingly, this study proposes three directions for future research: first, the design and empirical validation of intervention programs centered on non-verbal communication; second, the execution of research focusing on the assessment and feedback stages; and third, the explicit integration of non-verbal communication within teacher education and instructional design frameworks. This study is significant because it systematically maps the research landscape from a pedagogical perspective and establishes a robust academic foundation to guide future scholarly inquiries.