Resident Recruitment from the 4th through Next Year's First Half... Few Applicants Expected

Intern Attendance Rate Stands at 3.3%

The recruitment of residents starting training in the first half of next year will begin on the 4th. For interns, the selection process will start in January next year, after the national medical licensing examination.

A dedicated space for residents at a university hospital in Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

The government is waiting for residents to return while maintaining the proportion of residents in the metropolitan area, which it had planned to reduce from next year. However, with no signs of resolving the medical-government conflicts surrounding the increase in medical school admissions, it is uncertain how many residents will actually return.

According to the government and medical community on the 3rd, from the following day, each training hospital will begin recruiting about 3,500 first-year residents for the first half of next year. Applications will be accepted until the 9th, followed by written tests and interviews, with successful candidates announced on the 19th.

For the 'Big 5' hospitals, Seoul National University Hospital will recruit 105, Severance Hospital 104, Asan Medical Center 110, Samsung Medical Center 96, and Seoul St. Mary's Hospital 73 residents respectively.

However, considering the current intern attendance rate and national exam application rate, the number of applicants is expected to be small. First-year residents can apply after completing their internship. Currently, only 102 (3.3%) of the 3,068 interns at 211 training hospitals are attending work normally. The number of applicants for the written national exam scheduled for January next year is 304.

Public health doctors and military medical officers scheduled to be discharged next year can also apply for the first half resident recruitment. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, among the 506 public health doctors scheduled to be discharged in April next year, 348 are general physicians, and it is known that some general physicians are also included among the military medical officers scheduled for discharge.

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