(Seoul) The South Korean government announced Monday that it had launched the procedure to suspend more than 4,900 internal doctors who abandoned their posts to protest against a reform of medical studies, an unpopular movement which has sowed chaos in the country’s hospitals.
About 12,000 interns, or 93% of the total, were absent from their hospitals on Monday, defying government notices for them to return to work.
This wave of resignations and abandonment of posts, which began on February 20, caused the postponement of numerous treatments and surgical operations, the South Korean hospital system relying largely on interns, and forced the government to mobilize military doctors from Monday.
The Health Ministry announced Monday that it had started sending administrative notifications to striking doctors, the first step before suspending their licenses for three months.
“As of March 8, these have been sent to more than 4,900 trainee doctors,” said a senior ministry official, Chun Byung-wang.
According to him, a three-month suspension is also accompanied by a postponement of at least one year in the sanctioned intern’s obtaining his qualification as a specialist doctor.
He promised that doctors who return to work immediately will escape punishment.
Essential workers
“The government will take the circumstances into account and protect trainee doctors if they return to work before the end of the administrative procedure,” he told the press.
Under South Korean law, doctors are essential workers who cannot strike.
The government had given protesters until February 29 to return to work, and ordered a police investigation into the mobilization. The headquarters of the Korean Medical Association (KMA), which initiated the movement, was raided in early March.
The strikers are protesting against a plan to increase the number of medical school admissions by 65% from next year, or around 2,000 people per year. A measure that the government considers essential to deal with the shortage of health personnel and the aging of the population in South Korea.
Doctors are fiercely opposed to the project, believing that admitting more students to medical schools will result in a drop in the level of future practitioners, and that the quality of care will suffer.
But supporters of reform accuse them of being above all worried about seeing their income decrease and their social status deteriorate if competition increases.
According to a recent poll by the South Korean Gallup Institute, more than 75% of those questioned are in favor of reform, in a country where access to care is often difficult in rural areas.
“The government will not give up on dialogue,” added Mr. Chun, the Health Ministry official. “The government will respect and listen to the opinions of the medical community to support medical reforms.”
Last week, the government announced measures aimed at improving the remuneration and working conditions of interns, as well as a review of the 36-hour continuous work period, one of the main areas of discontent among doctors in training.