"Who is the doctor who only slept while the patient died?"... Park Dan targets senior doctors

"Who Is the Doctor Shifting Their Work onto Nurses?" Direct Confrontation

Amid the collective resignation of residents and a medical vacuum lasting over eight months in protest against the government's policy to increase medical school quotas, the representative of the residents' association posted a message targeting medical school professors and senior doctors.

On the 8th, Park Dan, the Emergency Response Committee Chair of the Korean Intern Resident Association, shared an article on his Facebook stating that "not only prescription duties but also difficult on-site tasks such as arterial catheter insertion, which residents used to handle, have largely been passed on to nurses."

He pointed out, "Who are the doctors still remaining in university hospitals now? Who are the doctors who, despite patient deaths, neither declared death nor even checked on the patient because they were sleeping? Who are the doctors who refused admission using the absence of residents as an excuse, even though they were capable of providing care? Who are the doctors who abandoned their professional identity and shifted their duties onto nurses? Who are the doctors remaining silent in the face of the government's tyranny of unjust intimidation and poor education?"

On the morning of the 7th, a patient and a guardian are moving in front of the emergency room of a large hospital in downtown Seoul. The photo is unrelated to specific expressions in the article. [Image source=Yonhap News]

He continued, "The current collapse is the reality of Korean healthcare that they have tacitly allowed for decades," and concluded, "So where are you and what are you doing?" This appears to imply that senior doctors, including medical school professors, are passing their medical duties onto nurses and are not responding adequately to the government's unfair oppression of residents and medical students.

Meanwhile, it was found that 34.5% of residents who resigned in opposition to the increase in medical school quotas have been re-employed, but only 1.7% have joined tertiary general hospitals.

According to the 'Employment Status of Resigned Residents' received by Kim Yoon, a member of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, as of the 19th of last month, out of 9,016 residents who resigned or declined appointments, 3,114 (34.5%) were re-employed by medical companies. Only 52 were employed at tertiary general hospitals, resulting in an employment rate of 1.7%. General hospitals accounted for 16.5% (514 people), hospitals 26.6% (829 people), and clinics 55.2% (1,719 people). A total of six residents opened their own clinics after resignation, with one opening a nursing hospital and the remaining five opening clinics.