A Study on the Legal Responsibility of Nurse

간호사의 법적 책임에 관한 연구

As the number of medical disputes regarding nurses has increased after medical disputes have increase, there is a need for a study on it. However, the legal relationship between nurses and patients has not yet been analyzed. Recently, the role and function of nurses are expanded according to the development of the science of nursing; moreover their activity and limitation of responsibility are also expanded. For this reason, the medical disputes regarding nurses have been increasing. However, the majority of these kind of dispute are just passed over because their practice is usually considered to be a mere action to assist doctor's role. In addition, nurse practice is not a secondary action of doctor's role, but forms part of a medical treatment. Of course, nurses handle many secondary tasks after doctors finish their medical treatment. But this is only part of the whole tasks of nurses. Furthermore, the general details of their medical treatment are not different from those of doctors because they also belong to the medical service personnel. Considering these features of nurse and the medical condition in South Korea, their task is becoming increasingly developed and specialized and they are also establishing their own field. With this stream of times, there is a growing interest in enacting a Nursing Practice Act, in other words, the independent law on nurse for the sake of patient safety and national health promotion. Then, their responsibility will distinctly be expanded as much more. That is, the time that nurses practice their medical care by following doctors' order and also pass over their responsibility to doctors is closed. Thus, this study examines the features and responsibilities of nursing practice, and discusses an institutional framework to efficiently cope with the legal disputes between nurses and patients. It aims to throw light on the decision making on nurse-patient disputes in future.