The gap between one nurse's patient workload at major hospitals in the Seoul metropolitan area and that at small and mid-sized regional hospitals has widened to as much as tenfold, according to the Korean Nurses Association (KNA).
The KNA said Monday that an analysis of Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service data titled "2025 Status of Nurses at Hospital-Level or Higher Medical Institutions" showed that while the average number of nurses per institution at hospital-level or higher facilities nationwide stood at 125.1, regional disparities were significant.
According to the analysis, Seoul had the highest average number of nurses at 191.68, followed by Jeju (173.5) and Sejong (167.8). In contrast, South Jeolla Province had only 73.41 nurses on average, less than half of Seoul's figure, while Gwangju (85.69), South Gyeongsang Province (89.07), and North Chungcheong Province (94.43) fell below the national average.
The gap was even more pronounced when broken down by hospital size. The average number of nurses per institution at large hospitals with 500 or more beds in Seoul stood at 1,651.5, while small and mid-sized hospitals with fewer than 100 beds nationwide averaged around 20. In North Jeolla Province, medical institutions with fewer than 100 beds had just 11.3 nurses on average per facility. Even accounting for patient numbers, the gap remains substantial. Considering the realities of shift-based operations, the association estimates that only three to four nurses cover an entire hospital during a single shift.
"If the workload of a nurse at a major Seoul hospital is set at one based on the number of beds per nurse, the workload at some small and mid-sized regional hospitals is estimated to be 10 times higher," the KNA said. "This gap is directly linked to nurses' physical and mental burnout and to patient safety issues." A bigger problem, the association added, is that as new nurses concentrate at major hospitals in the Seoul metropolitan area, regional hospitals are simultaneously facing worsening difficulties in new recruitment and the loss of existing staff.
"The imbalance of nursing personnel among hospital-level or higher medical institutions is not simply a hiring issue but one directly tied to maintaining regional healthcare systems," a KNA official said. "Urgent national-level measures are needed, including practical incentives and improvements in working conditions to secure nurses for regional areas."
Separately, marking International Nurses Day, the Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union (KHMU) held a press conference in Yeouido, Seoul, calling for the legislation of nurse staffing standards. According to the "2026 KHMU Regular Survey," 72.1 percent of the 29,275 nurse respondents said they were considering changing jobs. The top reason for wanting to leave their hospital was working conditions (48.9 percent). Of the respondents, 70.3 percent said their departments were short-staffed, with 79.9 percent in internal medicine wards and 79.2 percent in surgical wards reporting personnel shortages.
"The number of inpatients per nurse in Korea is higher than in other OECD countries, and quality nursing services cannot be provided under the current nurse staffing levels," the union said in its press statement. "To protect patient safety and lives, the number of patients assigned to each nurse per shift must be set and institutionalized."
