According to the Weibo news of the main station's global information, the reporter learned from South Korea**: 7,000 interns and residents who have left their posts will enter the procedure of revoking their physician licenses, and the relevant treatment is irreversible.
Previously reported. According to CCTV news, February 29 is the deadline set by South Korea for returnees in the "resignation wave". On the one hand, Korean junior doctors continue to hold ** and put forward their own demands; On the other hand, the majority of the South Korean population supports the tough attitude of **.
The way in which this medical crisis, which has lasted for nearly two weeks, will end has aroused widespread concern in South Korean society.
On March 1, South Korea** conducted a mandatory investigation into the relevant persons of the Korean Medical Doctor Association who were reported for suspected violations of the "Medical **".
Kim Jung-hwan, a senior member of the South Korean Ministry of Health, revealed that from March 4, a warning will be issued to doctors who continue to violate the "resumption of work order". Under South Korean law, doctors who seriously endanger public health can have their licenses revoked for up to one year, and doctors can face up to three years in prison or a fine of 30 million won, or about 160,000 yuan.
South Korean Minister of Interior and Security Lee Sang-min: If the leaders and forces behind the illegal collective action refuse to comply with the order to resume work, we will in principle detain and investigate. Individual interns who refuse to return to work will be tried through formal prosecution.
South Korea's tough statement was opposed by the Korean Medical Association.
On February 29, the results of an inspection of 100 large internship hospitals across the country showed that as of 7 p.m. the previous day, a total of 9,997 intern residents affiliated to these hospitals had submitted resignation reports, accounting for 80 percent of the total2%。The actual number of absent doctors was 9,076, accounting for 728%。
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, as of 5 p.m. on February 29, the number of residents returning to the medical site after the strike increased by 271 from the previous day, bringing the total number to 565.
Patient: I was diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer. The situation in the hospital is complicated, there are no empty seats in the waiting room, and many patients who cannot be accepted in other hospitals** also come here.
The shortage of medical resources has caused dissatisfaction among the South Korean people.
Retiree Kim Sung-nam: Interns leaving their jobs are like holding Koreans hostage, and I don't support it.
Yoo Hada, 25, a former intern at St. Mary's Hospital of the Catholic University of Korea, is one of those who has not yet returned to work.
Former intern Lyuhada: We want to show our willingness to dialogue and unify the channels of dialogue. Please stop treating interns like criminals, patients are waiting for us, and their families are anxious.
Interns are the main force in this "wave of strikes and resignations". Despite the fact that 1The 30,000 interns are a fraction of South Korea's 140,000 doctors, but they make up about 30%-40% of the total number of doctors in some major hospitals and perform many important functions to support senior medical staff.
Former intern Lyuhada: Interns usually work more than 100 hours a week, and while some may think that we start our shifts at 8 or 9 a.m., in reality, we start at 4 or 6 a.m. Our monthly income is between 2 million won (about 10,780 yuan) and 4 million won (about 21,560 yuan), not tens of millions of won. South Korea's current healthcare system, while good, runs by constantly torturing cheap interns.
And the "fuse" of this crisis is the "medical student expansion plan" proposed by **.
Since 2006, the number of students admitted to medical schools in Korea has been limited to 3,058 for 18 consecutive years, which is even lower than the previous figure of 3,507. The ** plan is to increase the number of medical students enrolled in universities from 3,058 to 5,058 starting from the college entrance examination in 2025. This is expected to increase the number of doctors to 10,000 by 2035. The remaining 5,000 people will be replenished by allowing retired doctors to use their surplus energy.
South Korea** Yoon Suk-yeol: The demand for healthcare has been increasing rapidly, but these needs cannot be met.
From the perspective of interns, blind expansion will only lead to a decline in teaching quality, and a large increase in junior doctors will lower salaries, intensifying competition in the workplace and making it more "involuted".
The Korea Herald further believes that there may be a "surplus" of doctors in South Korea due to the declining birthrate.
Reporter: On the one hand, South Korea advocates that with the aging of the population, South Korean society will need more medical staff in the future; On the other hand, the Korean doctor community believes that the number of doctors in South Korea does not appear to be insufficient as the birth rate continues to decline and the Korean population continues to decline. The stalemate between the two sides continues.
According to a Gallup poll in South Korea on February 16, about 76% of respondents expressed support for the expansion plan.
Retiree Ke Bingyuan: I've heard that in developed countries, we have a very small number of doctors, so I don't understand the departure of interns**.
South Korean people: What's wrong with this country? What do doctors do when they pay patients to treat their patients? Doctors have to treat patients, and if they leave, who will take care of them? All will die. Something must have gone wrong in this matter.
Chonnam Medical University is located in Gwangju Metropolitan City, Jeollanam-do, in the southwest of South Korea, about 300 kilometers from Seoul. Every spring, a large number of medical students graduate and become doctors.
The first two years of a Korean medical student's career are preparatory and the next four years are undergraduate studies. By the end of their junior year, they begin their internship at the hospital and prepare for the medical exam. After passing the exam, you can officially enter the hospital, first as an intern for one year, and then as a resident doctor for three to four years.
This is Park Jin-man from Seoul, who is interning at another hospital, and today is his first day as a resident at Chonnam National University Hospital.
On his first day on the job, the resident doctor, who came a year earlier than Park Jin-man, gave him a few special instructions.
Chonnam National University Hospital Resident: If you move too fast, you'll soon collapse. There are always endless patients, endless surgeries, and a lot of other things to deal with in our department. So, take your time, take your time.
There are data showing that the number of doctors in the thoracic surgery department of this hospital is declining year by year, and there are piles of patients.
Professor of Thoracic Surgery, Jeonnam Hospital, Jung In-suk: In five years, some doctors will retire. If we don't have a new resident to fill the vacancy, I'm afraid this system of critically ill patients will collapse before our eyes.
In South Korea, 50% of the population lives in Seoul. According to the Korean Medical Doctor Association, doctors in South Korea are currently concentrated in wealthy cities such as Seoul, while the number of doctors outside Seoul is declining year by year.
In addition, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology and other departments with heavy work have always lacked talent supply due to low income.
According to the OECD's November 2023 report, South Korea's doctors saw 6,113 patients per capita throughout the year, the highest among the 32 member countries and 3.3 of the OECD average of 1,788 patients per person4 times.
Correspondingly, the average time taken for first consultation in South Korea is 43 minutes, only the OECD country average, that is, 16A quarter of a 4 minutes.
According to the OECD, South Korea's population of 52 million is only 2 per 1,000 people6 doctors, not only in the "bottom" position among developed countries, but also far below the OECD member countries of 3. per 1,000 peopleAverage of 7 physicians.
In the remote areas of Chungcheongnam-do and Jeollanam-do, the number of doctors per 1,000 people has dropped to 049 and 047 people.
According to data provided by the Korean Association of Interns, junior doctors in South Korea work 36-hour shifts, while in the United States they work no more than 24-hour shifts. Half of junior doctors in the U.S. work less than 60 hours a week, while South Korean doctors typically work more than 100 hours.
Park Dan, head of the Korea Association of Interns, said doctors' frustration and anger lie in the fact that the proposed reform plan lacks details to address the questions raised by doctors. In addition, doctors want better legal protection.
At Jeonnam Medical University Hospital, at 9 p.m., a patient from Gochang City was admitted to the emergency department. The patient is in serious condition and requires emergency surgery.
Statistics show that most of the critically ill patients in Jeollanam-do have to walk a long way to Jeonnam National University Hospital for treatment.
If you are from the more remote cities of Yeosu or Suncheon, the distance will be more than 100 kilometers.
Patients often spend more than 10 hours on the road.
Due to the shortage of good doctors in the local area, many critically ill patients are transferred from other hospitals.
Waiting patient: We've been waiting for four hours, so it's devastating, I'm still in pain, and I'm going crazy now. But at least we have a seat to sit in.
On February 27, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that the health and lives of the people were threatened due to the mass resignation of interns and resident doctors, and in order to quickly fill the medical gap, the directors of large general hospitals could set their business scope according to their proficiency and qualifications from that day.
This means that some ** can temporarily replace the doctor.
Kang Bangsu, member of Gyeonggi Medical Association: What we want to say as doctors is that we should create an environment where we can use what we have learned to treat patients; What we also ask is that an environment should be created where patients can rely on specialists rather than interns or PAs (physician assistants).
South Korea's medical security system was established in the 70s of the 20th century, and the coverage rate of South Korea's "National Health Insurance" reached 968%。This makes South Korea have the saying of "medical paradise". The group of Korean doctors has also become the upper echelon of the elite.
According to the OECD, the average income of a specialist in South Korea is among the highest among developed countries, with an average annual salary of about 19 in 2020$20,000. In contrast, GPs earn less.
Even so, South Korea's ** reported that as of 2021, the income of doctors in general departments working in Korean hospitals is already 2 of that of ordinary salarymen1 times; Doctors in private hospitals earn three times as much as wage earners; Hospital specialists earn 4 of salarymen4 times, and 6 times for private hospital specialists8 times.
Jung Hyung-sun, a professor of health administration at Yonsei University in South Korea, believes that in Western countries, public hospitals account for more than 50% of the total number of medical institutions, while more than 95% of South Korea's medical institutions are private. Doctors in public hospitals want to be as many peers as possible, so that they can reduce their workload and their salaries will not be affected too much. But doctors in private hospitals want to reduce the number of peers they compete with in order to maintain their high incomes.
It is the severe scarcity that puts Korean doctors in the position of "white aristocrats", into vested interests with a particularly superior sense of superiority, and sets a "threshold" for entering their own circles.
The Korea Herald quoted an old doctor as saying, "In South Korea, there is no shortage of doctors, only doctors. ”
For a long time, the profession of doctor has been at the top of the list of dream careers in the minds of Korean teenagers.
In the college entrance examination, Korean students prefer to choose medical majors, and nearly 80% of medical students have experienced multiple repetitions. Even some students who have been admitted to other majors still drop out and retake the exam in order to enter medical school.
At present, many Korean doctors are medical school professors, and the medical system in South Korea is the same as that in the United States, and students are led by senior doctors to work as interns for a long time after graduation.
Therefore, when it comes to deciding whether to expand the enrollment of medical schools, Korean doctors have a lot of say and have accumulated a lot of so-called "struggle experience".
In 2000, 40,000 doctors in South Korea staged the largest strike in history, forcing 80 percent of the country's hospitals and clinics to close. The doctors accused the "separation of medicine" reform that threatened their livelihoods, forcing Kim Dae-jung at the time to make concessions, reducing the number of medical school students by 10%, prohibiting pharmacists from arbitrarily dispensing medicines, and increasing medical expenses.
In 2020, Moon Jae-in** proposed a plan to expand the enrollment of 4,000 students at the medical university within 10 years. But after a month-long strike by doctors, the plan was shelved.
Now, this scene is playing out again, causing a deeper reflection in Korean society.
Myung Seo-wha, President of the Korea Council for the Rights of Cancer Patients: Even the issue of medical school admissions itself clearly shows that there is a lack of adequate communication and consultation between ** and doctors. We are not asking for a strict response, please make every effort to resolve this issue.
Related reading: South Korea** and the medical community are "tough", how will this turmoil end?
Editor: Li Yilinzi, **, Global News, Weibo, CCTV News.
Duty Editor Gu Li.
New Year's Greetings Guide (Truth or Dare Edition.
The director of "Ice Hunting" responded to the controversy over Yao Anna's acting skills.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs notified the welfare lottery 2200 million jackpot situation.