Hundreds of trainee doctors have handed in their resignations and are preparing to stop working starting Tuesday
Seoul:
South Korea ordered a return to work on Monday after trainee doctors resigned en masse to protest changes in medical training, with the government considering using military medical personnel to deal with shortages.
South Korea says it has one of the lowest doctor-to-population ratios in the developed world and the government is pushing to increase the number of doctors, in part to help a rapidly aging society.
But doctors are fiercely opposed to the government’s new plan to significantly increase medical school admissions, claiming it will harm the quality of services. Critics say doctors are mainly concerned that the reforms could undermine their wages and social status.
Hundreds of trainee doctors handed in their resignations on Monday and are preparing to stop working from Tuesday, despite the government’s threat of legal action.
But Park Min-soo, the second vice-minister of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, told a news conference that the government said it had “issued a treatment maintenance order to all trainee doctors,” referring to legal measures to prevent doctors from stopping work.
Under South Korea’s medical law, doctors deemed essential workers are restricted from large-scale shutdowns.
“I implore trainee doctors not to turn their backs on their patients,” he said, adding that the government would inspect hospitals to check whether doctors were participating in the strike.
Police warned they may arrest the “main instigators” of the shutdown.
The training reform calls for increasing the number of students admitted to medical schools by 65% from 2025.
The plan is popular with the public, who experts believe is tired of long wait times at hospitals, and a recent Gallup Korea poll showed more than 75% of respondents supported it, regardless of political affiliation.
But it sparked a backlash from doctors, with the Korean Medical Association saying the government’s threat of legal action was akin to a “witch hunt” and claiming the plan would create a “Cuban-style socialist healthcare system”.
Vice Minister Park said the program is necessary in South Korea’s rapidly aging society and that if current quotas remain in place, doctors will be “overwhelmed by exponential demand” in the future.
“Hospitals are already struggling to find doctors and there are recurring problems with timely access to care,” Parker added.
The government says more than 700 trainee doctors have resigned so far.
The Defense Ministry said it would open military hospital emergency wards to the public if the doctors’ strike continues and was considering sending military doctors to civilian hospitals to help fill the gap.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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