Nurses' participation in primary health care in Korea.

The major focuses of the Korean health care system are to meet the basic health needs of a young population disease prevention maternal and child health family planning and provision of health care to the rural population. Only 17% of the countrys health care facilities and 13% of its health manpower are located in the rural areas. Primary health care in rural areas is provided on the myun level each of which has a health subcenter. Only 15% of these subcenters have qualified nurses and the majority are staffed by insufficiently trained nurses aides. The government is attempting to increase the number of nurses at the myun level by improving salaries and living and working conditions; however retaining nurses in the rural communities remains a major problem. 61% of actively working nurses are currently working in hospitals and 53% work in large cities such as Seoul. The government has recently established community health practitioners as a new category of health personnel central to its primary health care strategy. Further training and utilization of existing nursing personnel s planned and 2000 such practitioners are expected to be trained by 1984. Community health practitioners must have both nursing and midwifery licenses and complete a 24-week course after which they are assigned to a village clinic. The overall goals of the program are: 1) to contribute to improvements in village income levels and promote health through a strengthening of the health care service 2) to develop self-care abilities through community participation and 3) to help improve the quality of life and facilitate health insurance services through the standardization of health care.