Labor & Workforce

Seoul appeals to medical professors against joining walkout

(Update 1: Adds slump in president’s approval rating in last two pars)

Seoul, Mar 15 (EFE).- South Korea’s Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong made a last-ditch appeal on Friday to medical faculty professors against walking off their jobs in support of the almost month-long trainee doctor strike.

Professors at several medical teaching centers have threatened to resign en masse in support of the strike if the government does not offer substantial progress to relieve the current situation.

The professors announced at the beginning of the week that they would support the trainee doctors, who are protesting the government’s plan to increase medical school places by 2,000 a year – up to a total of 5,058.

“The public will find it difficult to understand medical professors participating in collective action by abandoning patients when they should focus on persuading trainee doctors and students to return to hospitals and schools,” Cho told a government response meeting on Friday.

More than 90 percent of the country’s 13,000 trainee doctors have walked out from their jobs since Feb. 20.

Since resident doctors make up around 40 percent of the staff at large hospitals in Seoul, these medical centers are being forced to suspend around half of scheduled surgeries and refer emergency patients to other centers.

The government has begun sending notices to trainee doctors ordering them to return to work and warning them that if they do not comply, they face a suspension of their license.

The government argues that it is necessary to increase the annual places in medical schools by 2,000 to address the shortage of doctors, especially in rural areas and in areas such as pediatrics, obstetrics and cardiothoracic surgery.

But the doctors denounce that the decision has been unilateral and that the increase should be 350 places so that it does not affect the quality of training and services and costs to patients, and that it should first address underpaid specialists and reinforce the legal protection of health workers.

The Asian country has not increased places in medicine in 27 years and has one of the OECD’s lowest number of doctors per 1,000 people (2.46), only behind Mexico, Poland, Colombia and Turkey.

The strike has also affected the popularity of President Yoon Suk-yeol which, less than a month out from the legislative elections, stands at 36 percent, according to a survey published Friday – a drop of 3 percent on the previous week.

Yoon’s disapproval rating increased by 3 percent, according to the poll conducted by Gallup Korea, which attributed the setback to the strike. EFE

asb/tw

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