Experienced Senior Doctors as Essential Medical Personnel... 56 Medical Institutions Participating

Full-Scale Launch of Regional Public Medical Institution Matching Project Next Month

The government and the medical community have begun full-scale discussions on utilizing senior doctors who have retired or left medical practice in essential public healthcare settings.

On the afternoon of the 27th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Korean Medical Association, and the National Medical Center held a meeting of the related agencies consultative body at the Korean Medical Association building in Ichon-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, to promote the 'Senior Doctor-Regional Public Medical Institution Matching Project (tentative name)'.

This project connects retired doctors willing to work or doctors seeking to change jobs before retirement with regional public medical institutions such as provincial medical centers and Red Cross hospitals. Regional public medical institutions are currently experiencing a severe shortage of medical personnel, and it is expected that utilizing experienced doctors will enable the provision of high-quality public healthcare.

Accordingly, the project will be actively promoted starting next month with a survey on medical personnel recruitment demand targeting regional public medical institutions. A total of 56 medical institutions, including 35 provincial medical centers and 6 Red Cross hospitals, have expressed their intention to participate in the project. The three organizations plan to encourage active participation of retired doctors through strengthened promotion of this project.

Park Hyang, Director of Public Health Policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, "To fundamentally resolve the manpower shortage faced by regional public medical institutions, it is necessary to comprehensively discuss improvements to the overall medical personnel training system from a long-term perspective, along with measures to attract trained personnel to regional and essential medical services. Considering that it takes at least 10 years from training medical personnel through such policy improvements to deploying them in regional and essential medical fields, matching senior doctors with regional public medical institutions can be an effective short-term alternative," adding, "We expect this project to help strengthen medical personnel support for regional public medical institutions, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare will spare no effort to provide possible support for this purpose."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.