South Korea deploys public, military doctors to hospitals
SEOUL — South Korea began deploying military physicians and doctors from public health centers to strike-hit hospitals on Monday to help care for patients affected by the walkout of nearly 12,000 trainee doctors from 100 hospitals over government reform plans.
Twenty military surgeons along with 138 public health doctors were assigned to 20 hospitals for four weeks, Health Minister Cho Kyoohong said at a meeting on Sunday.
The number of military physicians called on to help so far was only a small fraction of about 2,400 military doctors, according to a defense ministry briefing.
The government has denied the walkout, which started on Feb 20, has caused a full-blown health crisis, but some hospitals have had to turn away patients and delay medical procedures.
As of Friday morning, nearly 12,000 protesting doctors at 100 hospitals had left their posts in a dispute over a government plan to increase medical school admissions, health ministry data showed, defying pressure from authorities to return to work.
Authorities have been trying to coax the doctors to return to work by warning them their medical licenses could be suspended, but so far that tactic appears to have had little success.
The health ministry on Monday said it had sent administrative notifications, the first step toward suspending medical licenses, to trainee doctors after they defied specific orders to return to hospitals.
“As of March 8, (notifications) have been sent to more than 4,900 trainee doctors,” said Chun Byung-wang, director of the health and medical policy division at the health ministry.
The government has previously warned striking doctors that they face a three-month suspension of their licenses, a punishment it says will delay by at least a year their ability to qualify as specialists.
Chun urged the striking medics to return to their patients.
The government has said the plan to increase annual medical school admissions by 2,000 starting from 2025 is vital to remedy a shortage of doctors in one of the world’s fastestaging societies.
The striking doctors argue that simply adding medical students will not address pay and work conditions and could possibly exacerbate the problems. Critics of the policy also accuse President Yoon Suk-yeol of picking a fight over medical reforms to benefit his party ahead of parliamentary elections in April.
A survey published last week by the Yonhap News Agency found that 84 percent of respondents supported adding more doctors, while 43 percent said striking physicians should be sternly punished.