Improvement Plan of Nurse Staffing Standards in Korea

Purpose: This study compares the expected nurse-to-patient ratio, penalties for violating these regulations, and the laws enacted in the medical and nursing fields in Korea and advanced countries like Germany, Australia, the United States, and Japan. Methods: This study deployed an integrative review method and used search terms such as “nursing law,” “nurse ratio,” “nurse,” “nurse staffing,” “health,” and “staffing” to find articles published in English, Korean, German, or Japanese through Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature Plus with Full Text, the Westlaw (International Materials-Jurisdiction) site, US government and state sites (federal parliament, National Conference of State Legislatures), and Google Scholar. Results: Compared with medical laws in other advanced countries, Korean laws are quite crude and its nurse-to-patient ratio does not reflect patients' status. Korea also lacks strict penalties for nurse staffing ratio violations. Conclusion: Korea requires a strong regulatory apparatus for nurse staffing in health-care organizations to improve the quality of its health-care services and patient safety.