Recently, South Korean doctors have made a fuss again, they have taken off their white coats and resigned from their posts to oppose Yoon Suk-yeol**'s medical reform plan, and a large-scale rally of doctors' groups is scheduled to be held on March 3. As a result, South Korea, which is already a small country, is deeply mired in a chaotic medical system crisis. In a developed country, the people are even struggling to see a doctor. Staggering.
At the beginning of February 2024 local time, Yin Xiyue** issued a package to comprehensively reform local medical care and basic medical care, including: a large-scale expansion of enrollment in medical colleges and universities, the introduction of a system to introduce local contract doctors, and the reduction of criminal penalties for medical accidents; **It is expected to start the expansion of medical school enrollment from the current 3,000 to more than 5,000 students in the 2025 academic year, eventually enabling South Korea to add 15,000 doctors by 2035.
The explanation for this is that South Korea's rapidly aging society poses enormous medical challenges. **By 2025, more than one-fifth of South Korea's 51 million people will be over the age of 64.
This is not South Korea's alarmism, after all, according to the United Nations definition, when the proportion of the elderly population over 65 years old in a country or region exceeds 14%, it will enter an "aging society"; By the end of 2019, the proportion in South Korea was as high as 149%, which has become one of the countries with the most serious aging problem in Asia.
Therefore, Yoon Suk-yeol** reasonably believes that South Korea will need more doctors in the future to keep society functioning.
But after the plan was introduced, the operation of South Korean society began to be abnormal, and one stone stirred up a thousand waves, and the medical system was directly collapsed! For this medical reform plan, especially the expansion of the enrollment scale of the medical college, the doctors of major hospitals cannot sit still. A large number of doctors went on strike, resignations of resignations, ** were forced to raise the public health alert level to "severe" for the first time, and emergency departments in all of South Korea's largest hospitals were also on "red alert".
According to statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare on February 26, tens of thousands of interns and residents have resigned from 100 large general hospitals across the country, accounting for 80 percent of all doctors in these 100 hospitals5%。According to Yonhap News Agency, the doctors' strike has already seriously affected social medical services, and major general hospitals in major cities have had to cancel surgeries and even refuse to accept patients for a time.
In order to deal with this chaos, Yoon Suk-yeol ** adheres to the principles of "revocation of license" and "arrest and investigation". On February 26, South Korea** called on doctors who participated in the collective resignation action to return to work as soon as possible, and promised to exempt those who return to work before February 29; According to the health department, failure to return to work by March 1 will result in penalties ranging from the suspension of a medical license for at least three months.
Doctors, however, warn that they will not waver and will continue to strike. The doctors insisted that they were fighting for better benefits for health care workers — such as increased wages and reduced workloads; Some of them insist that they are not opposed to the health care reform. But some of them also expressed opposition to the recruitment plan, arguing that the number of doctors is related to the future of the profession, claiming that "medical resources are saturated and additional doctor slots will affect the standard of medical services." ”
In fact, if you put yourself in their shoes, you can understand the collapse of Korean doctors. In the future, if a large number of fresh blood pours into the ranks of doctors, the per capita income and social status of doctors will definitely be impacted. Doctors who are currently in internships and residency will inevitably feel anxious and uneasy about their future when they face a large number of competitors after going through an arduous learning process.
Park Mou, the head of the Korean Association of Intern Doctors, said in a TV interview: "Everyone is angry and frustrated, so the doctors are leaving the hospital, please listen to us!" Park said that as long as ** is willing to listen to their demands, the striking doctors are willing to negotiate with **. At this stage, how to appease these medical personnel has become the biggest problem.
Some scholars believe that South Korea's ** implementation of the medical school expansion policy "conforms to public opinion". According to a survey conducted by the Korea Health and Medical Union in December 2023, 89Three percent of South Koreans approve of the expansion of medical school enrollment.
Without popular support, it is difficult to say whether the doctors will be able to "win the battle" this time. Ordinary people waiting in desperation for medical attention are tired and frustrated by this endless dispute.
According to Reuters, 34-year-old Jin sought medical attention for a broken leg but was denied treatment by three hospitals. Jin said: "If ** really cares about the people, I hope they take a step back now, and the doctors also take a step back, so that patients will not be injured." Eventually, Kim was able to undergo surgery at a public medical center in Seoul**. Jin believes that the doctor's duty is to treat the sick and save people, and their brazen strike is very unreasonable for the patients.
Another interviewee, Lee, who suffers from asthma, is now very worried that he will not be able to make an appointment with a doctor in three months: "Many doctors have submitted their resignations, so we don't know what to expect." ”
In fact, there are some doctors, although they do not want to "abandon the patient" and understand the urgency of the patient's medical treatment, but because they are in the general community of doctors, they also have to follow the common action.
Just,Whether it's doctors or politicians, they are all at the top of the pyramid relative to patients. If doctors choose to abandon their patients for fear that their jobs will be ruined, who will be responsible for those patients who are suffering from their illnesses and have no medical treatment?
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