It is amazing how little these doctors in Seoul think of the Hippocratic Oath as they let patients go without care because of their own selfishness:
Doctors at major hospitals in Seoul and its neighboring areas have decided to stage indefinite walkouts, while medical professors resolved Wednesday to join community doctors in a one-day strike next week, demanding the suspension of a medical school quota hike.
In a meeting late Wednesday, professors from the country’s 40 medical schools decided to join the one-day general strike set for next Tuesday, organized by the biggest association of community doctors.
Kim Chang-soo, head of the Medical Professors Association of Korea, told Yonhap News Agency that the association has decided to join the strike, though he said it remains unclear how many professors will actually participate in the walkout.
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.
The striking Korean doctors have lost their court case against the Korean government’s plan to stop the increase of medical students to address the country’s doctor shortage. I wonder what the doctors’ legal defense was against the quota? I can’t imagine they argued for their real reason which was to keep an artificial doctor shortage to ensure they keeping getting high paychecks:
A Seoul appellate court rejected Thursday an injunction sought by the doctors’ community to halt the government’s highly contested plan to increase the nationwide medical school admission quota, paving the way for the first such quota hike in 27 years.
The Seoul High Court made the decision on an injunction filed by trainee doctors, medical professors and students seeking to suspend the government’s plan to increase the medical school quota by 2,000 starting in the 2025 academic year.
This would pave the way for the government to finalize the first medical school quota hike in 27 years, aimed at addressing chronic shortages in essential but unpopular medical fields as well as remote rural areas.
With the legal limbo lifted, the government is expected to expedite the process of having increased medical quotas reflected in universities’ 2025 admission announcements to be made public by late May or early June.
It looks like the doctor strike is slowly defeating the will of the Korean government to take action against them to get them back to work:
This photo taken April 30, 2024, shows a hospital in Daegu, 237 kilometers southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)
The government appears to have shelved a plan to take punitive measures against a protracted walkout by trainee doctors and have pulled back slightly from its plan to increase medical school admission quotas amid a standoff with major doctors’ associations, according to officials Sunday.
Still, the doctors’ associations remained adamant over the issue and renewed their call for the government to revisit the medical reform from scratch, despite some signs of an internal split.
During a media briefing last week, Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo said the government has decided to grant local universities autonomy in deciding their medical school quota by a range of 50 to 100 percent for the 2025 academic year in a bid to break the monthslong deadlock, according to officials.
Additionally, the government has delayed the suspension of licenses for doctors who have been inactive for months under its “flexible disposition” policy since late March.
It is amazing that doctors would just cancel appointments like this at the last minute. Who knows how long some of these patients have been waiting for an appointment before they were cancelled:
Some medical professors at the country’s three major hospitals, Seoul National University Hospital, Severance Hospital and Korea University Hospital, suspended surgeries and outpatient clinics on Tuesday for one day, as previously announced, to protest the government’s plan to expand the number of new medical students by 2,000 a year.
The main hall at SNUH’s Cancer Hospital was without medical staff Tuesday, while a number of patients wandered around the ward, having just learned that the doctors wouldn’t be coming in. Some said they hadn’t been told that their appointments would be canceled or postponed; other said they had to wait in long queues, not knowing when their names would be called.
Protest against increase of medical students Professors and students at the medical school of Chungbuk National University in Cheongju, 112 kilometers southeast of Seoul, stage a protest on April 29, 2024, opposing the faculty’s plan to expand its medical student intake in line with the government’s medical reform initiative. (Yonhap)
It appears the strike by Korean doctors to stop President Yoon from expanding medical school students is beginning to work. The Korean public may want to have more doctors, but the current strike denying them care now is impacting the ruling party in election polls:
President Yoon Suk Yeol reaffirmed his determination to expand the admissions quota for medical schools, Monday, urging the public to support the scheme, which he believes is crucial for safeguarding public safety.
However, at the same time, he left room for dialogue, saying doctors should come up with a unified alternative proposal if they want to reduce the number of new slots. This appears to be an effort to address the ruling People Power Party’s (PPP) demand for the president to display greater flexibility on the issue, which is impacting support for the ruling bloc ahead of the April 10 general elections.
In a televised 51-minute address to the nation, Yoon outlined his rationale for adding 2,000 new slots and criticized doctors for walking off their jobs for nearly 50 days to protest the government plan.
You can read more at the link, but if the doctors want to cut a deal with President Yoon they better do it before the election. Whether Yoon’s ruling party wins or not; after the election he will have no incentive to strike a deal to end the strike.
Korean doctors are now going to ramp up their use of denying care to patients as leverage against the government:
The monthlong confrontation between the government and doctors was feared to worsen further as medical school professors were to tender mass resignations and cut back on patient care starting this week, while the government was to suspend the licenses of striking trainee doctors, officials said Sunday.
More than 90 percent of the country’s 13,000 trainee doctors have been on strike in the form of mass resignations for about a month to protest the government’s decision to increase the medical school enrollment quota by 2,000 seats from the current 3,058 starting next year to enhance health care services in remote areas, as well as essential but less popular medical disciplines.
Joining the collective action, professors of medical schools nationwide will begin to submit their resignations Monday and will reduce their weekly work hours to 52 hours by adjusting surgeries and other medical treatments, according to the national medical school professors’ council.
Starting April 1, they will also “minimize” medical services for outpatients to focus on seriously ill patients and emergency patient care.
This demonstrates how incredibly selfish Korean doctors are to protect their fiefdoms. These medical professors are willing to go on strike to pressure the government to not increase medical school students which is being done to try and address the nation’s doctor shortage:
Professors from medical schools nationwide have begun to contemplate whether to submit resignations in collective action pressuring the government to seek a breakthrough in the protracted walkout by trainee doctors, a medical professors’ group said Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, medical professors from 19 universities met online, decided to form a joint emergency response committee and resolved to decide at their respective schools by Friday whether to collectively submit resignations.
The 19 schools include Seoul National University, Yonsei University, University of Ulsan, the Catholic University of Korea and Pusan National University.
The strike by trainee doctors on the behest of Korean doctors trying to protect the scarcity of doctors in the ROK has now led to the suspension of thousands of medical licenses. To really end this strike the government needs to find a way to protect the trainee doctors from retaliation from their doctor supervisors if they return to their hospitals:
The health ministry said Monday it had sent prior notices of license suspension to some 5,000 trainee doctors who have defied an order to return to work, in protest of a plan to boost the number of medical students.
Deputy Health Minister Jun Byung-wang told reporters that it completed sending the notices to 4,944 junior doctors last week. When receiving the notices, the doctors will be required to submit their opinions on punitive measures by March 25.
With the government vowing to take legal action against junior doctors making threats to their colleagues, or impeding their return to hospitals, the ministry opened a hotline to protect physicians wishing to return, Jun said.
“The government will spare no efforts to help trainee doctors wishing to return to hospitals,” Jun said.
