President Yoon Vetoes Opposition Led Nursing Act
The nursing act that has caused huge protests in South Korea from the health care community against it, has been vetoed by President Yoon:
A Cabinet meeting led by President Yoon Suk Yeol is held at the presidential office in Seoul on May 16, 2023. (Yonhap)
President Yoon Suk Yeol rejected the opposition-led nursing act Tuesday amid strong protests from doctors and nursing assistants against it, exercising his veto power for the second time since taking office.
The act, which was railroaded by the main opposition Democratic Party last month, is aimed at stipulating the roles and responsibilities of nurses, and improving their working conditions.
“The people’s health cannot be exchanged for anything,” Yoon said during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office, before rejecting the legislation and asking the National Assembly to reconsider it.
Yoon said people’s health comes ahead of anything else, such as politics, foreign policy and economic policy, and can only be properly maintained through cooperation between various groups of medical professionals.
“The nursing act is creating excessive conflict between these related groups, and the move to separate nursing services from medical institutions is causing people to feel anxious about their health,” he said.
Yonhap
Here is why there has been much criticism of the bill:
Doctors and nursing assistants have opposed the bill, arguing the legislation would cause confusion in the medical sector because it could lead to nurses opening their own clinics without doctors’ supervision and that nursing assistants could be discriminated against.
You can read more at the link.
In regards to the vetoed law, it simply defines the role of the nurses and improve the working environment and compensation of nurses.
So why are the doctors and nursing assistants up in arms?
First the current law limits nurses to “The assistance in medical examinations performed under the supervision of a doctor”.
However the proposed law changes the above to “The tasks required for patient care conducted under the supervision of or prescription issued by a doctor”
The doctors feel the above gives the nurses too much power, and enables them to set up their own hospitals. IMO, I don’t know what is there that gives the nurses too much power and such, but anyways.
Second the doctors do not like the wording “Regulate matters pertaining to nursing in order to ensure that all citizens receive high-quality nursing benefits in healthcare institutions and local communities”
The reason being is that doctors, esp doctors who run hospitals fear that they will be forced to hire more nurses and increase salaries to meet the requirement for “high quality nursing benefits”. And those doctors don’t want to do that.
Third and last the nursing assistants are up in arms, because they fear that with the improvement in working conditions for nurses, more people will go to nursing school resulting in more nurses being hired instead of nursing assistants, and that they will be discriminated against.
One other thing.
Candidate Yoon promised the Korea Nurses Association that he will sign a nurses bill if he becomes President.
Like other politicians he broke that promise big time, but the thing is the law was formulated and created by the DPK.
Which means the DPK can go around the campaign trail and say “Oh we wanted to improve conditions for ordinary Koreans but the President is going around vetoing them.”
The DPK now has an ally in the form of the KNA and its 258,000 or so members who are not happy and feel the President betrayed them.
And the National Assembly elections are less than a year away.