Purpose
This study aimed to suggest directions for legislation regarding medical support tasks in the Nursing Act to promote the advancement of nursing.
Methods
This study reviewed the history of medical support nurses in South Korea and the educational programs for advanced practice providers, both domestically and internationally.
Results
Nurses have performed medical support tasks traditionally carried out by physicians, but legal controversies have persisted. As a result of the escalation of conflicts surrounding policies aiming to increase the physician workforce, training doctors left hospitals. This prompted the initiation of pilot programs allowing nurses to legally engage in medical support tasks, culminating in the enactment of the Nursing Act in September 2024. Internationally, advanced practice providers such as advanced practice nurses (APNs) and physician assistants (PAs) undergo graduate-level education and certification. Since Korea lacks a PA system, integrating medical support tasks within the APN framework would be preferable. Achieving this will require absorbing clinical practice nurses (referred to as PA nurses) into the APN system, implementing government-supported education programs to address regional disparities, and establishing reimbursement policies for APNs.
Conclusion
With the implementation of the Nursing Act, a long-term approach is needed to establish professional qualifications, accreditation, education, training, examination, and regulatory systems. A comprehensive discussion should be undertaken to develop an optimal workforce, ensuring the delivery of safe and high-quality healthcare services to patients and the public.

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to identify the level of terminal care performance of nurses in long-term care hospitals, and investigate how nursing professionalism, attitudes on advance directives and death anxiety affects their terminal care performance.
METHODS
Total of 294 nurses from long-term care hospitals completed the structured questionnaires including nursing professionalism scale, advance directives attitude survey, death anxiety scale and terminal care performance scale. Data were analyzed using the SPSS/WIN 24.0.
RESULTS
There were significantly correlation among terminal care performance of nurse, nursing professionalism, attitudes on advance directives, and death anxiety. The key factor that affected nurses terminal care performance was nursing professionalism(β=.26, p < .001), followed by attitudes on advance directive (β=.20, p < .001), participation of terminal care education (β=.15, p=.006), total work experience (β=.13, p=.015), and participation of Do-Not-Resuscitate education (β=.13, p=.018), which explained about 23.1% of the variance in nurses terminal care performance (F=17.05, p < .001).
CONCLUSION
The results of this research suggest that to enhance the nursing performance of nurses in long-term care hospital, it is necessary to develop an education program that can enhance a professionalism and the attitudes on advance directives, and reduce death anxiety experienced by nurses.

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