Nurses move through a university hospital in Seoul. [Yonhap]
Nurses move through a university hospital in Seoul. [Yonhap]

The government is building a public-private joint response system to eradicate "taeoom," a term for the entrenched culture of workplace bullying in hospitals. The initiative covers every stage from prevention and fact-finding to consulting, reporting and labor inspections, with the aim of transforming organizational culture on hospital floors.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Employment and Labor signed a memorandum of understanding titled "Creating Safe Hospitals Where People Want to Work" on Thursday at Inha University Hospital in Incheon, alongside the Korean Hospital Association, the Korean Nurses Association, the Korea Labor Foundation and the Korea Employment and Labor Education Institute.

President Lee Jae Myung had signaled his commitment to eliminating bullying in medical institutions on July 1, writing on his X account: "Taeoom can never be justified — not in the name of education, not in the name of custom, not in the name of organizational culture. It is horrific violence."

Under the agreement, the Ministry of Employment and Labor will continue its healthcare-sector workplace bullying investigation to assess the prevalence of harassment at small and midsize regional hospitals and clinics, identify available support programs and remedies, and gather frontline perspectives from the medical and nursing communities.

For nursing personnel in particular, a separate fact-finding survey will be conducted under the Nursing Act, covering staffing levels by institution, occupation and region, working conditions, human rights violations, and the training and treatment of nurses.

The agreement also calls for hospital-specific "workplace innovation consulting." This includes a tailored organizational culture diagnostic targeting junior nurses to identify potential bullying factors such as hierarchical workplace dynamics, expanded harassment prevention training designed for the hospital sector, and the development of a standard manual for improving organizational culture.

The government will also use the existing "Work-Life Balance Plus 4.5 Project" — which provides preferential support to life-and-safety workers in the healthcare sector — to help reduce actual working hours, and will seek to extend that support to university hospital nurses and other healthcare workers who have so far fallen outside its coverage.

The response framework from reporting through to labor inspection will also be strengthened. When workplace bullying occurs, rapid counseling and support will be available through channels including an SOS hotline. A mechanism will also be established to channel information on problematic workplaces identified by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korean Nurses Association into formal labor inspections by the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

The signatory organizations will form a "Healthcare Workplace Innovation Council" and conduct biannual reviews of progress on collaborative tasks.

"The government must work to improve working conditions so that an adequate nursing workforce can be deployed, while medical institutions — led by their hospital directors — must make parallel efforts to reform their organizational culture," said Health and Welfare Minister Jeong Eun-kyeong. "We will work closely with the Ministry of Employment and Labor and frontline medical workers to build hospitals where healthcare workers are respected and can work safely."


thlee@heraldcorp.com