2024-07-22 02:06:14
The second half of this year, the recruitment of residents and the application for the national medical examination will begin on the 22nd. The initial interest is how many applicants there will be. In the worst case, it cannot be ruled out that there will be a hole in the doctor training system from medical school education to residency and specialist.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Welfare’s Training Environment Evaluation Committee will post a notice for the second half of the year to recruit residents on the 22nd. Each training hospital will post a notice for recruiting residents on their hospital homepage on that day and disclose the number of recruits for each department, the schedule for written and practical exams, applicant qualifications, and the score distribution ratio for each exam.
Applications will be accepted until the 31st. The training hospital will conduct written and practical tests and interviews for the applicants to select the final successful candidates. Those selected will begin training on September 1st.
Earlier, 110 out of 151 training hospitals nationwide applied to the government to recruit 7,707 residents in the second half of this year. Of these, the ‘Big 5’ hospitals will select 2,883 people, which is 87.9% of the total number of resigned employees. Catholic Central Medical Center will select 1,019 people, Seoul National University Hospital 191 people, Yonsei Severance Hospital 729 people, Seoul Asan Medical Center 423 people, and Samsung Seoul Hospital 521 people.
To conclude, there is a widespread skepticism not only in the medical community but also within the government. It is widely expected that most hospitals will not be able to fill their recruitment quotas.
An official from the Big 5 Hospitals said, “Even if the number of applicants falls short of the quota, we do not plan to conduct additional recruitment,” and “Even if the number of applicants falls short of the quota, we do not plan to select applicants if we determine that they do not have the training ability, and this has been the case in the past.”
The ‘training special case’ that allows residents who have been in the same specialty for less than a year to apply to other hospitals with the same number of years of experience is only allowed for recruitment in the second half of this year. In other words, if you do not apply this time, you will not be able to resume training until September of next year.
However, the residents said that most of them are not interested in applying for the second half of this year’s recruitment, and that only third- and fourth-year residents who are about to take the specialist exam will apply.
There is speculation that residents from local areas may use this as an opportunity to enter the Big 5 hospitals, but there is a great fear that they may be labeled as “traitors” or “opportunists,” and there is also an atmosphere in the professor community that residents selected in this way cannot be accepted as students.
In fact, the Catholic University of Korea radiology professors released a statement on the 20th stating, “The government is forcing the recruitment of residents in September, using the future quota of residents at medical institutions as bait,” but added, “We will not serve as supervising specialists for residents hired in the second half of the year and will refuse to provide education and guidance.”
The medical community estimates that as of March this year, out of 14,531 residents, 11,000 to 12,000 will give up their training.
Large hospitals that depend on specialists for 30-40% of their services are deeply concerned about how to fill the medical gap caused by the shortage of doctors.
The problem does not end here; there is also a lack of additional medical personnel.
This is because medical school students have been expressing their intention to refuse to take the national medical licensing exam, which is currently accepting applications for applicants.
The national medical licensing exam is an exam that fourth-year medical school students take to obtain a medical license. Students must pass both the practical exam, which is held sequentially from September to November, and the written exam in January of the following year.
In order to identify candidates for examination, each medical school must submit a list of prospective graduates to the Korea Medical Licensing Examination Institute, and for this purpose, a consent form for provision of personal information from prospective examinees is required. If personal information is not provided, application for the national medical examination cannot be made.
However, according to a survey conducted by the Korean Medical School and Graduate School of Medicine Student Association on 3,015 fourth-year students from 40 medical schools nationwide, 95.52% (2,773 people) of the 2,903 respondents refused to submit consent forms for providing personal information for the national exam.
If there are no doctors produced because there are no people passing the national exam, there will be no residents (interns) to enter training hospitals, so a chain reaction is inevitable.
Considering the situation of medical students who are at risk of taking a leave of absence or repeating a year in protest against the increase in medical school enrollment, the chaos in the supply and demand of medical personnel is likely to be prolonged.
A professor at a university hospital said, “Not only have issues like the poor training environment for medical residents been exposed, but the medical personnel training system that has been linked from medical school students to medical residents to specialists is also on the verge of collapse.” He added, “The government should be thinking about this, but I don’t understand what their plan is.”
Reporter Kim Jeong-hyeon Photo News 1
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2024-07-22 02:06:14