Resident Recruitment for Second Half Begins Today... Concerns Over Departures in Regional and Essential Departments

A total of 13,498 residents to be recruited by hospital by August 29
Recruitment notices finalized nationwide; return of resigned residents expected

Teaching hospitals across the country are beginning to recruit residents for the second half of the year. As the government has accepted most of the residents' demands to guarantee continuity of training, a significant number of residents who left hospitals in protest against the expansion of medical school admissions in February last year are expected to return to the medical field.

According to the medical community on August 11, teaching hospitals nationwide are finalizing and announcing recruitment notices by this date, and will select interns and residents according to their own schedules by August 29. The Ministry of Health and Welfare's Residency Environment Evaluation Committee has announced the recruitment quotas by hospital: 3,006 interns, 3,207 first-year residents, and 7,285 senior residents (second to fourth year), for a total of 13,498 positions.

At a meeting of the Residency Council on August 7, the government decided that if a resigned resident returns to the same department and year at their previous hospital, the teaching hospital can autonomously determine the quota, and even if the number exceeds the quota, the government will retroactively recognize the additional positions according to procedure. In addition, for residents waiting for military enlistment, the government promised to make every effort to allow them to complete their training before enlisting.

With the government accepting a significant portion of the residents' demands, and as consensus grows among residents that further protest is meaningless, it is expected that a considerable number of residents who had postponed their return will now resume their training.

However, the scale of returning residents is expected to vary by region and specialty. Currently, there are 2,532 residents in training nationwide, with 1,707 (67.4%) working at hospitals in the Seoul metropolitan area and 825 (32.6%) at non-metropolitan hospitals. At the end of 2023, before the conflict between doctors and the government, 64% of all residents worked in the metropolitan area, but in the recruitment drives last year and in the first half of this year, a relatively larger number of metropolitan residents returned.

Additionally, residents who resumed training in June through the additional recruitment in the first half of the year were concentrated in so-called "popular specialties" rather than essential departments such as internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics. According to data received by Kim Sunmin, a lawmaker from the National Innovation Party, from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the specialties that saw the largest increase in the number of residents from March to June this year were radiology (16.9%), orthopedics (12.9%), urology (11.8%), and plastic surgery (10.5%). In contrast, the increase rates for internal medicine (5.0%), surgery (2.1%), obstetrics and gynecology (3.3%), pediatrics (1.0%), and emergency medicine (3.5%) were all below 5%.

As a result, both teaching hospitals that need to hire additional residents and regional and small- to medium-sized hospitals that have been hiring resigned residents are facing difficulties. Since residents who wish to return to their previous hospitals can now be hired autonomously by teaching hospitals regardless of the existing quota,

large hospitals or popular specialties that have already hired residents from other hospitals during the conflict may end up with more residents than before the dispute. On the other hand, in some primary and secondary hospitals, resigned residents who had been working there are now expressing their intention to resign in order to return to their original teaching hospitals, leading to immediate concerns about medical staff shortages.

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