[메디칼업저버 박선재 기자] The Korean Nurses Association expressed its displeasure, saying it had never agreed to the government’s use of PA (medical assistant) nurses.
The government announced on the 20th that it would actively utilize PA nurses as an alternative to the resident strike.
Accordingly, on the 10th, the association issued a press release stating that there had been no prior consultation with the government and that there had been no official consultation afterward.
The association said that currently, all nurses across the country have established the awareness that nurses’ work must be clarified through the nurse compliance struggle that has been ongoing since May 18, 2023, and the sense of responsibility to work safely under legal protection has been strengthened.
The association said, “We will form a nurse task force to respond to the medical gap crisis, and through this, we will ensure that nurses are not illegally deployed to fill the medical gap as ordered by the government, as was the case in the medical gap situation caused by the medical resident strike in 2020.”
The association explains that this is not a problem limited to the use of PA nurses, which the government intends to deploy without any promise of protection or punishment for unlicensed medical practice orders, but an issue that applies to all nurses.
The association said, “In order to minimize damage to patients in a medical vacuum crisis, the government must first promise to clarify the scope of nurses’ work and establish legal guarantees and safety nets, and must specify this in the legal protection system so that all nurses can perform their work in a medical vacuum situation.” “It will be possible,” he said.
