Return Rate at Seoul’s “Big Five” Hospitals Tops 70%
Regional and Departmental Gaps Persist
Government: “Will Consider Lowering Crisis Alert After Hospital Stabilization”
Resident doctors who had collectively resigned in protest against the Yoon Suk Yeol administration's policy to increase medical school admissions are now returning to their training hospitals. However, there is a significant disparity between the situations in the Seoul metropolitan area and the provinces, as well as between popular specialties and essential medical departments. Numerous challenges remain unresolved, including improving the training environment for residents and clarifying work allocation with Physician Assistant (PA) nurses.
According to the medical community on September 1, resident doctors who were selected through the recruitment process for the second half of the year at training hospitals nationwide last month are resuming their training starting today. While the Ministry of Health and Welfare is still compiling the exact number of returning residents, it is understood that a significant portion of those who left hospitals in February last year in protest against the expansion of medical school quotas have chosen to return to training.
At the so-called "Big 5" hospitals in Seoul, the application rate for resident positions in the second half of the year reached 60 to 80 percent, with the staffing rate for each department generally exceeding 70 percent. However, some residents were unable to return, such as Park Dan, former emergency response committee chair of the Korean Intern Resident Association, who applied to return to the emergency medicine department at Severance Hospital but was not selected during the recruitment process.
Large hospitals where residents are returning are expected to operate more smoothly. As the workload for professors is significantly reduced, it is also anticipated that patient inconvenience will decrease. The government plans to monitor the stabilization of each hospital and, once conditions improve, will consider lowering the "serious" level of the public health disaster crisis alert that has been in place since last year, as well as lifting the emergency medical system.
However, even with the return of residents, the atmosphere at hospitals is expected to be quite different from before. This is because efforts to improve the training environment-one of the main demands of residents-will lead to reduced working hours and other changes. The government is currently conducting a pilot program to reduce residents' weekly working hours from 80 to 72 hours, and continuous working hours from 36 to 20 hours.
Clarifying work allocation with PA nurses, who filled the gap during the residents' absence, is also an urgent issue. Hospitals are currently discussing internally how to adjust overlapping work between residents and PA nurses. In some hospitals, nurses have expressed fatigue due to frequent changes in their assignments as PA nurses are being redeployed to wards.
In particular, the concentration of residents in the Seoul metropolitan area and the avoidance of essential medical specialties are likely to intensify. The results of this year's second-half resident recruitment show that the return rate of residents outside the metropolitan area was relatively low at around 50 percent, further widening the gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions. It has also been reported that some residents who previously belonged to essential departments have switched specialties upon returning to training.
A medical industry official stated, "In some regional emergency medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology departments, it appears that only a very small number of former residents have returned." One resident commented, "During the period of conflict between the government and medical community, the salaries of newly hired doctors in regional emergency rooms where resigned residents used to work have more than doubled. Hospitals are now offering even higher salaries to emergency medicine residents who have not returned to training, proposing contracts to work until March next year."
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