[Reporter’s Notebook] Doctors Must Return to the Bedsides of Sick Patients

A mother asked, “Please find a nurse with the surname Pyo. I can’t remember her name. I saw her in the intensive care unit.” The administrative staff stared at an Excel sheet for a while and then gave her the name. She jotted it down on the corner of the medical bill receipt and wrote a letter. It began with “Dear Doctor, thank you.” She folded the postcard and put it into the hospital’s customer feedback mailbox. She also passed a thank-you note to the attending physician. This happened three months ago at a university hospital in Gyeonggi-do, just as the medical-government conflict was beginning.

The mother was diagnosed with epidural hemorrhage and skull fracture due to a fall. She was classified as an ultra-emergency patient. She underwent emergency surgery. The two-hour craniotomy, intensive care at the trauma emergency center, and the time it took to regain consciousness were priceless. It was her first time at a tertiary hospital and in neurosurgery. She relied entirely on the medical staff. Fortunately, her recovery was rapid. Grief turned into hope. Life is precious. In critical moments, doctors become beings with god-like powers to patients and their families. That power is noble and can change the life and fate of someone on the brink.

In the worldview of the medical-government conflict, there are no patients. There are only doctors and the government. Only extreme verbal battles and turmoil are highlighted. Words like discord, enforcement, countermeasures, direct strikes, and final ultimatums dominate. Fights, confrontations, disputes, and sniping are broadcast live. Doctors are demonized as a self-centered, entrenched elite group. The government is portrayed as a greedy, hasty administrator recklessly pushing to increase staff by 1,500 for votes.

Personifying the structure as demons or hasty administrators does little good. The essential medical package proposed by the government as a premise for increasing staff is a difficult issue. Financial investment is necessary. It is difficult to amend the law to raise health insurance premiums. It requires an increase in the tax burden. Although there is a political assumption that the government will not undertake such a troublesome task ahead of the presidential election in three years, this is why more meticulous administrative checks and monitoring are needed.

Some doctors express strong distrust of the government. They argue that the promised 10 trillion won over five years for essential medical fee increases is unsustainable. They claim that if the health insurance reserve fund runs out, it will become a blank check or a bounced bill. They pessimistically say it will become an empty promise due to tax resistance. Ultimately, the conclusion is “It’s premature,” “Redraw the blueprint,” “Invalidate the increase,” and “Korean healthcare is a mess.” The underlying reasoning is filled with emotional elements like cynicism, nihilism, and skepticism.

What is clear is that if the cost-effective medical system created by the designated provider system and the monopoly single insurer faces limits due to low birth rates and aging, whether or not staff increases are fixed values, it is a subject for reform, and that itself cannot be grounds for opposition.

Many key actors are missing from the worldview of the medical-government conflict. There are still doctors protecting severe trauma centers. There are patients as well. On the 18th, the Regional Epilepsy Support Hospital Council declared they would not participate in the strike. “It is absolutely unacceptable to jeopardize the lives of hundreds of thousands of severe patients immediately to prevent an increase in doctors who will be active in 10 years” (Hong Seung-bong, Chair of the Regional Epilepsy Support Hospital Council) they said. This is a message doctors who have left patients’ sides should reflect on.