Purpose: This study aims to suggest the number of test items in each of 8 nursing activity categories of the Korean Nursing Licensing Examination, which comprises 134 activity statements including 275 items. The examination will be able to evaluate the minimum ability that nursing graduates must have to perform their duties.Methods: Two opinion surveys involving the members of 7 academic societies were conducted from March 19 to May 14, 2021. The survey results were reviewed by members of 4 expert associations from May 21 to June 4, 2021. The results for revised numbers of items in each category were compared with those reported by Tak and his colleagues and the National Council License Examination for Registered Nurses of the United States.Results: Based on 2 opinion surveys and previous studies, the suggestions for item allocation to 8 nursing activity categories of the Korean Nursing Licensing Examination in this study are as follows: 50 items for management of care and improvement of professionalism, 33 items for safety and infection control, 40 items for management of potential risk, 28 items for basic care, 47 items for physiological integrity and maintenance, 33 items for pharmacological and parenteral therapies, 24 items for psychosocial integrity and maintenance, and 20 items for health promotion and maintenance. Twenty other items related to health and medical laws were not included due to their mandatory status.Conclusion: These suggestions for the number of test items for each activity category will be helpful in developing new items for the Korean Nursing Licensing Examination.

BACKGROUND The development of nursing practice should be preceded by research that can provide a theoretical basis. Therefore, to establish a developmental strategy for infection control, it is important to identify the knowledge structure of infection researches in the field of nursing. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify the core keywords and topics of infection-related research over the past 40 years to better understand the research trends. METHODS The study was conducted in four steps: 1) collecting abstracts, 2) extracting and cleaning semantic morphemes, 3) building co-occurrence matrix, and 4) analyzing the network features and modeling topic group. A total of 4,854 articles published between 1978 and 2017 were retrieved from the Web of Science. Abstracts from these articles were extracted, and network analysis was conducted using the semantic network module. RESULTS The core keywords were ‘wound’, ‘injury’, ‘breast’, ‘dressing’, ‘temperature’, ‘drainage’, ‘diabetes’, and ‘cleaning’. Ten topics were identified from the databases. The major topics were ‘PLWH (people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus)’, ‘birth’, and ‘STI (sexually transmitted infection)’. CONCLUSIONS Infection research was developed diversely in the fields of blood-borne infections, sexually transmitted infections, respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, and wound management. Most of all, HIV infections have been a major focus by nursing researchers. In addition to research areas that have already been developed, more research on waterborne infections, gastrointestinal infections, and community-acquired infections will be needed.