Government and Uihyeop Agree on Improving Resident Doctors' Working Conditions... Including Reduced Working Hours (Comprehensive)

Agreement at Basic Level

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korean Medical Association (KMA) have reached a basic-level agreement on improving working conditions after confronting each other over solutions to the shortage of residents (specialist trainees) in essential medical fields.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the afternoon of the 13th, the Ministry and the KMA held the 21st Medical Issues Consultative Body meeting at Conference House Dalgaebi in Jung-gu, Seoul, to discuss medical sector issues including the expansion of medical school quotas.

The KMA referred to the resident application results announced on the 7th, pointing out that increasing medical school quotas would not solve the essential medical care problem. Yang Dong-ho, head of the KMA negotiation team, said, "Despite the government's will, the recruitment results for the first half of next year show that most hospitals failed to secure quotas in essential medical departments such as pediatrics," adding, "In this situation, do you believe that simply increasing medical school quotas will result in residents responsible for essential medical care being doctors who trickle down?"

He emphasized, "Even hospitals called the 'Big 5' failed to secure quotas," and said, "We must first address the high risk-low return (risk versus insufficient compensation) and excessive punishment, which are the causes of the collapse of essential medical care, and prioritize improving the training environment."

According to the results of the first half of 2024 first-year resident early recruitment (targeting 140 training hospitals) released by the Ministry on the 7th, pediatrics had 53 applicants for 205 quotas, with an application rate of 25.9%, ranking last overall. Other essential medical departments such as emergency medicine (application rate 79.6%) and obstetrics and gynecology (67.4%) also failed to fill their quotas.

Regarding this, Jeong Gyeong-sil, Director of Health and Medical Policy at the Ministry, said, "Although the government made various efforts, it was insufficient to achieve results at once," and emphasized, "We will reform the workforce system so that hospitals relying on residents shift to a specialist-centered structure, improve continuous working hours for residents, and prevent medical personnel from burnout."

Jeong explained that regarding the expansion of medical school quotas, the government has not unilaterally pushed for an increase, referring to the process of the Medical Issues Consultative Body meetings so far. He stated, "Going forward, the government will discuss the scale of physician workforce expansion within the Medical Issues Consultative Body and decide through the Health and Medical Policy Deliberation Committee, which includes participation from various sectors."

The government and the KMA agreed to first promote policies aimed at improving conditions such as reducing excessive continuous working hours so that residents receive high-quality training and grow into specialists with sufficient clinical competence, operating hospital staff centered on specialists, strengthening the training process and supervising specialist system, expanding training cost support, and enhancing residents' rights.

Both sides plan to address the establishment of a medical delivery system and principles for discussing physician workforce based on objective statistics and data at the next Medical Issues Consultative Body meeting scheduled for the 20th of this month.

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