The importance of continuous nursing education has increased as the computerized medical information system has come into wide spread and nursing profession has come to require more advanced nursing knowledge and technique. Continuous education programs for military nurse officers have been provided in various types since 1948, when the Armed Forces Nursing Corps was established. In fact continuous education programs and specialty training programs seem to be rather formative and cannot reflect the change and need in nursing profession. So that current program should be evaluated for further development. According to the medical law, all the nurses are mandated to attend continuous education program once a year, but military nurse officers are released from the obligation because they are on military service. The purpose of this study is to study on continuous education and specialty training programs and to provide the preliminary data for educational development. Data were collected from 557 nurse officers working in military hospitals from July 6 to July 23 in 2005, using the questionnaire developed by the researchers. Only 510 questionnaires were analyzed with SPSS/PC+ statistics program. The results of the study were as follows: 1. 60% of nurse offices didn¡¯t attend any type of military nursing education program for past 3years. 66.4% didn¡¯t attend any type of civilian nursing education program for past 3 years. 2. Only 27.8% answered that current military nursing education program was sufficient in nurse officers¡¯ professional growths. 37% considered inflexible duty schedule as a reason of failing to attend nursing education programs, 5.9% considered deficient information of education program, 5.5% considered their deficit of efforts to pursue, and 5.5% considered ¡¯not given the opportunity¡¯ as a reason of failing to attend nursing education programs. 3. 91.8% agreed to mandatory participation in nursing education program accreditated by the Korean Nurses¡¯ Association. The nurse officers showed their interests in Emergency nursing, infection control, new nursing theory and trend, and nurse¡¯s leadership. 4. Related to the military nursing specialty program, ICU care, scrub nursing, Emergency nursing, and psychiatric nursing are considered most important, but anesthetic nursing and HD nursing are considered least important. The period of education was 6 months for ICU nursing, Scrub nursing, and emergency nursing, and one year for psychiatic nursing. According to the results of this study, nurse officers should be mandated to attend a continuous education program once a year, and cyber-education can be suggested for the military nurses who work at the remote area. All the current specialty training programs should be evaluated and modified in comparison with advanced nursing.
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