- Written by Gene Mackenzie
- Seoul correspondent
South Korean doctors protest against government medical policies in front of the presidential palace in Seoul
The South Korean government is threatening thousands of striking junior doctors with legal action and revocation of their medical licenses if they do not return to work on Thursday.
About three-quarters of the country's junior doctors have quit their jobs in the past week, causing disruption and delays in surgeries at major teaching hospitals.
Trainees are protesting the government's plans to admit significantly more medical students to universities each year to increase the number of doctors in the system.
South Korea has one of the lowest doctor-to-patient ratios in the developed world, and its population is aging rapidly, with the government warning there will be a severe shortage within a decade.
This week, the empty hallways of St. Mary's Hospital in Seoul offered a glimpse of what that future might look like. There were few doctors or patients in the triage area outside the emergency room, and patients had been warned to stay away.
Ryu Ok Hada, a 25-year-old doctor, and his colleagues have not been to work at the hospital for more than a week.
“I feel weird not waking up at 4 a.m.,” Liu joked. The junior doctor told the BBC that he was used to working more than 100 hours a week, often 40 hours without sleep. “It’s crazy how much we work for such little pay.”
Although South Korean doctors are relatively well paid, Ryu argues that he and other junior doctors may earn less than the minimum wage when working hours are taken into account. He says that increasing the number of doctors will not solve structural problems in the health care system that leave people overworked and underpaid.
Medical care in South Korea is largely privatized, but it is affordable. Doctors say emergency, life-saving surgeries and specialized treatments are priced too low, while non-essential treatments such as cosmetic surgery are priced too high. This means that doctors are increasingly choosing to work in more lucrative fields in big cities, leaving rural areas understaffed and overburdened with emergency rooms.
Ryu Ok Hada, a doctor at St. Mary's Hospital, has not worked for more than a week.
Mr. Liu, who has been working at the hospital for a year, says that interns and young doctors are being exploited by university hospitals as cheap labor. In some large hospitals, they make up more than 40% of the staff and play an important role in keeping the hospital running.
As a result, some hospitals' surgical capacity has been cut in half over the past week. The disruption was primarily limited to scheduled procedures, which were postponed, but only a small number of isolated critical care operations were affected. Last Friday, an elderly woman who went into cardiac arrest died in an ambulance after seven hospitals reportedly refused her treatment.
The government announced that the patient in question had terminal cancer and that her death was unrelated to the strike.
“There's no doctor”
Patience is running out for doctors, both from health care workers who have to take on additional work and from the public. Nurses warned they were being forced to perform procedures normally performed by fellow doctors in the operating room.
Choi, a nurse at a hospital in Incheon, told the BBC that her working hours had been extended by an hour and a half each day and she was now working with two people.
“Patients are anxious and frustrated that this situation is continuing with no end in sight,” she said, urging doctors to return to work and find other ways to express their dissatisfaction. I urged him to do so.
According to the government's proposals, the number of medical students entering universities next year will rise from 3,000 to 5,000. The striking doctors argue that training more doctors will reduce the quality of health care by giving licenses to less qualified practitioners.
But doctors have struggled to convince the public that more doctors are a bad thing, and they have received little sympathy. On Tuesday, Mrs. Lee, 74, was being treated for colon cancer at Severance Hospital in Seoul, where she traveled more than an hour to get there.
“There are no doctors outside the city where we live,” she says.
“This problem has been ignored for too long and needs to be resolved,” said Lee's husband, Sun-dong. “Doctors are so selfish. They are holding us patients hostage.”
The couple said they were concerned that more doctors would go on strike and would be willing to pay more if the dispute was resolved.
However, President Yoon Seok-yeol's approval ratings have improved since the strike began, meaning the government has little incentive to overhaul the system or make procedures more expensive just ahead of April elections. ing.
The two sides are currently locked in a fierce standoff. The Ministry of Health has refused to accept the doctors' resignations, instead threatening to prosecute them for violating the medical law if they do not return to the hospital by the end of the day.
Vice Minister of Health Park Min-soo said that if the deadline is exceeded, the driver's license will be suspended for at least three months.
The government announced it would begin the process on Monday.
It claims that nearly 300 of the 9,000 striking doctors have already returned, and hopes the threat of penalties will be enough to get them back to work.
Some defectors believe the government's heavy-handed approach could sway public opinion. The Korean Medical Association is scheduled to vote on Sunday whether senior doctors should join the medical training program. If many of their junior colleagues are arrested, they will be more likely to take action.
Liu said he is prepared to be arrested and have his medical license revoked, and plans to quit his medical job if the government does not compromise or listen to his complaints.
“The health care system is broken, and if it continues like this, there is no future and it will collapse,” he said. “I used to farm, so I thought I'd give it a try again.''
Additional reporting by Jake Kwon
