MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS. Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo speaks during a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters to discuss the ongoing walkout by trainee doctors in the administrative city of Sejong on April 23, 2024, in this photo provided by his office. The government is urging trainee doctors to end the mass walkout, ahead of the plan by medical professors to take a day off every week as the load has taken a toll on their health. (Photo by Yonhap)
SEOUL – Second Health Vice Minister Park Min-soo on Tuesday called on doctors to stop their collective action as medical school professors were considering taking a day off every week, a move that deepens concerns over further disruptions in the country's health care system.
About 12,000 trainee doctors have left their worksites since Feb. 20 in protest of the government's plan to boost the number of medical students, forcing major hospitals to delay or cancel surgeries and other public health services.
In support of the walkout by junior doctors, medical professors submitted their resignations.
"The medical community should stop collective action and join a special commission on medical reform set to be launched this week for productive discussions," Park told a government response meeting.
Under the envisioned presidential commission, officials from the health ministry and other relevant ministries, as well as some 20 experts, will discuss how to reform the country's medical system, including the possible adjustment of medical school admissions and ways of raising investment in essential medical fields.
However, the Korea Medical Association and the Korea Intern Resident Association have vowed to boycott the initiative.
Upping the ante, medical professors were considering taking a day off every week as they have been stretched thin amid the prolonged walkout by trainee doctors.
The emergency committee for national medical professors will hold a general meeting later in the day and discuss the potential suspension of all surgeries and treatment for outpatients once a week, according to its officials.
Details, including when to begin the move, are expected to be decided in accordance with the situations of each hospital, though they are likely to continue operations of their emergency rooms and intensive care units, they added.
The professors, who serve as senior doctors in major hospitals, have been struggling to fill the void of junior doctors.
"Remaining professors have experienced heavy workloads and have felt fatigued. So we are reviewing such an option," a committee official said.
The move is also seen as a way of adding pressure by the medical community on the government to seek a breakthrough as the plan on the medical school admission quota for next year is supposed to be finalized by end-April.
Some hospitals, including the Chungnam National University Hospital in the central city of Daejeon, have already decided not to provide service for outpatients on Fridays starting this week, and many other hospitals are feared to follow suit.
Medical school professors at Seoul National University (SNU) will review the option during a meeting slated for Tuesday.
Adding to the woes is that medical professors began submitting their resignations on March 25, and the resignations could take legal effect after the elapse of one month even without approval from their employers.
The education ministry has said "not many" professors have tendered resignations, and no resignations have been accepted so far.
The government has proposed dialogue by setting up a special presidential commission on medical reform while allowing universities to decide their quotas by a range of 50 percent to 100 percent of what the government assigned for next year.
But doctors have rejected the proposals, calling for the government to revisit the issue from scratch.
The government has stressed the need to increase the medical school admission quota to address a shortage of doctors, particularly in rural areas and essential medical fields.
Given South Korea's rapid population aging and other issues, the country is expected to fall short by 15,000 doctors by 2035, according to the health ministry.
Doctors, however, have said that the quota hike would compromise the quality of medical education and services and create a surplus of physicians, and the government must devise ways of encouraging more physicians to practice in such "unpopular" fields as high-risk surgeries, pediatrics, obstetrics, and emergency medicine. (Yonhap)
