SNU medical professors vote to conduct 'general strike' from June 17

A doctor walks past a patient on a wheelchair in a general hospital in Seoul on Thursday. [YONHAP]

Medical professors at one major hospital are standing firm in their opposition to the official plan to expand medical recruitment by staging a “general strike” despite recent conciliatory gestures from the government.

A committee representing medical professors at Seoul National University (SNU) decided on Thursday to stop providing services at hospitals associated with SNU’s medical school beginning on June 17.

More than 68 percent of the professors voted in favor of a general shutdown that is likely to see all SNU hospitals stop scheduling new surgeries and outpatient treatments.

Voting began on Tuesday and ended on Thursday at noon. Although the vote was initially scheduled to take place on a single day, it was extended to gather a broader perspective from professors after the government said it would allow hospitals to process junior doctors’ resignations.

The proposed general strike is expected to be on a larger scale than the preceding weekly one-day shutdown, which began in late April. Professors were not obliged to walk out from their posts during the previous weekday strikes.

According to a SNU medical school official cited by Yonhap News Agency on Thursday, the university’s hospitals will no longer schedule non-essential surgeries or outpatient appointments.

The medical professors’ committee of SNU’s medical school said that “all departments aside from those that administer essential care are likely to join the general strike.”

The nation’s largest doctors’ group, the Korean Medical Association (KMA), is currently asking doctors who run their own clinics whether they are willing to stop providing services as a means of protest against the medical recruitment expansion plan.

In a questionnaire it sent out to doctors, the association asked, “Do you support the association’s resistance to the government’s attempts to meddle in medical education and healthcare services?” and “Will you participate in a collective action planned by the KMA that includes clinic closures?”

As of 5 p.m. on Wednesday, 50,437 doctors holding KMA membership, or some 39 percent, had submitted their opinions regarding a general strike. Voting started on Tuesday and will run through Saturday.

The KMA will announce the results of the vote on Sunday.

Although the government has offered minor concessions to the medical community by revoking return-to-work orders and pausing administrative penalties against returned doctors, few junior doctors have returned to their posts.

Eight junior doctors returned to their training hospitals on Tuesday, the day the government announced it would suspend administrative punishments for doctors who return to hospitals.

The Health Ministry said 7.4 percent of junior doctors nationwide, or 1,021 out of 13,756, were at work on Tuesday.

General hospitals predict that less than 30 percent of striking junior doctors will return.

The government instructed hospitals and medical professors to check on junior doctors’ individual stances on employment through counseling before approving their resignations.

An official from one of the country’s five major hospitals told Yonhap News Agency that “most junior doctors said that they do not intend to continue medical training” in conversations with their supervising professors.

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]