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Against the government's policy to increase the number of medical schools, majors from all over the country go on strike all day tomorrow (7th). Minister of Social Welfare Park Neung-hu said today, "In order to expand the lack of local doctors, increasing the number of medical schools is inevitable." Doctors say that it is not enough to simply increase the number of doctors, but let's take a look at the problem of nurses who are lacking 24 hours a day, 365 days a week, looking at the local public medical field.

Reporter Kim Hyeong-rae.

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Corona19 The local public health center that served as a base in the crisis, but the number of nurses working there was always insufficient.

[Jeonbuk Province Public Hospital Nurse: Now it's our two 76 people nurse originally required manpower, but now I have currently a nurse 61 people.]

[Strong year / Gimcheon Medical Center NUM: go find a house you need is a nurse's license, even if I really bossam It was a desire to do it.] With the

lack of nurses, the government has increased the number of nursing staff across the country from 7,000 since 2008.

As of 2018, the number of active nurses per 1,000 population in Korea is 3.8, and the OECD average is about 7.4.

Why is that?

As of 2018, nearly 400,000 people have nurses' licenses, but less than half of them actually work in hospitals.

This problem is more serious in the province, especially in public health clinics.

New nurses from four public medical centers in Chungnam have a 43.4% turnover rate in three years, nearly three times higher than the Seoul Medical Center's three year turnover rate of 15%.

[Chang Young-Chang/Taebaek-si Public Delivery Hospital Nurse: Since I was in the countryside, most of the young people are now urban areas, and some patients leave, but many nurses leave… .] The

reasons why nurses quit are the poor working conditions, low wages, and burning.

It seems difficult to solve the vulnerable local public health problems by increasing the number of selected people without improving the treatment of nurses.

(Video coverage: Han Il-sang · Kim Tae-hoon, video editing: Ha Sung-won, CG: Jun-ho Lee)