Abstract
This study was carried out to grasp visiting nurses' perception of the service referral between health and welfare with a view to providing the basic data for the visiting nursing activities. A questionnaire survey was conducted on public health nurses in 25 health centers in Seoul from Feb. 12, 2001 to Mar. 15, 2001. A total of 151 questionnaires were collected and they were analysed by use of SPSS/WIN 7.5. The results of the survey are as follows. 1. In general, visiting nurses were burdened with heavy workloads. On average, a visiting nurse covered 5 ‘dong's(the smallest administrative unit), 564 households, and 1223 persons. They spent almost a quarter of their working hours moving from home to home and recording the charts after home visiting. They took 30-60 minutes to provide their services when visiting homes. As for the frequency of home visiting, they were following the instructions recommended by the government. However, their services were still wasteful, not skill-oriented, in that they spent more time assessing ‘subjects’ rather than providing their ‘services’ for them. 2. As for the degree of service performance, visiting nurses scored average 2.94 and 2.28 on the four-point scale in the area of health and welfare respectively. The Pearson coefficient between the two variables was high(.56). According as the health services increased, the welfare services increased as well, which showed that the service referral between the two areas should be essential. 3. ‘The necessity of cooperation with social welfare staff’ scored average 4.49, and ‘the degree of cooperation with social welfare staff’ scored average 3.16 on the five-point scale; There was a statistically significant difference (average 1.33) between the two variables. Such a big difference between perception and practice results from the lack of political support that connects the two service areas comprehensively. Therefore it is recommendable to establish a so-called ‘Visiting Nursing Center’ in the ‘dong’ office in order to provide integrated services of health and welfare at once in cooperation with social welfare staff. That's the way to meet the public needs directly and it's more efficient as well in terms of cost-saving.