South Korea Announces Plan to Allow Foreign Medical License Holders Practice Medicine in South Korea
If these Korean doctors keep striking they may not have as many jobs to go back to if foreigners start filling them:
Those holding a medical license issued from foreign nations will be allowed to legally practice medicine in South Korea in the case the government declares a top-level medical service warning, the health ministry said Wednesday.
The revision to the enforcement regulation of the Medical Act came as the country is experiencing major medical service disruptions due to the monthslong walkout by trainee doctors in protest of the government’s push to increase the number of medical students by 2,000 starting next year from the current 3,058.
Under the revision, those who have foreign medical licenses will be able to practice medicine in South Korea upon the approval by the health minister when the country is in the highest medical disaster alert mode.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Looking forward to Indian and Filipino doctors?
Will the foreigners be expected to learn Korean (as they should) to interact with Korean patients, or will there be a corps of interpreters assigned to the docs? Or will the docs merely treat expats (who, of course, don’t all speak English)?
Self-inflicted wounds bite.
I say this is a bluff… a negotiation tactic.
Doctors be like: “Well, we will have more domestic competition, but at least we wont have to compete with foreign doctors. What a win for us!”
There are too many logistical problems to make this an issue, from language barriers to Koreans pulling out their skintone chart.
What could go wrong?