Medical professors say they won't teach junior doctors recruited to replace strikers
![A recruitment poster on the wall in a general hospital on Monday in Seoul says the otorhinolaryngology department at Severance Hospitals in Sinchon, western Seoul and Gangnam, southern Seoul and state-run Ilsan Hospital are hiring junior doctors for the fall semester. The recruitment starts on Monday. [YONHAP]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2024/07/22/2b6b8d83-a210-4a26-b38c-a11b7f9ebc4d.jpg)
A recruitment poster on the wall in a general hospital on Monday in Seoul says the otorhinolaryngology department at Severance Hospitals in Sinchon, western Seoul and Gangnam, southern Seoul and state-run Ilsan Hospital are hiring junior doctors for the fall semester. The recruitment starts on Monday. [YONHAP]
Training hospitals nationwide have submitted their applications to recruit 7,707 junior doctors for the fall semester, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
On Monday, a faculty-level emergency response committee at Yonsei University’s Severance Hospital said its professors “cannot accept newly recruited junior doctors who had no connection to Severance Hospital as their students and work colleagues.”
The professors said the recently opened job slots should be reserved for junior doctors who used to work at Severance Hospital, promising their effort and support to help them return to the hospital “safely and proudly.”
The committee also accused the government of threatening the hospitals with cutting their recruitment quotas if they did not comply with its order to process the resignations of striking junior doctors, arguing that newly recruited junior doctors would be “mere health workers inevitably hired due to the government’s threat.”
It also blamed the government for sabotaging the relationship between the faculty and their pupils and inciting conflict between hospitals, medical professors and junior doctors.
On Saturday, medical professors at the radiology department at Catholic Medical Center, an affiliate of the Catholic University of Korea, said they would boycott training and educating junior doctors who newly joined the hospital in the fall semester.
Catholic Medical Center has eight training hospitals under its arm. It processed resignations from 881 junior doctors and notified the government that it would recruit 1,019 junior doctors in the fall semester.
In a statement on Saturday, the medical professors said their action is a “strong expression to show they would not replace junior doctors who walked off to protest the government’s misleading policies with other junior doctors.”
The medical community doubts that the fall semester recruitment will resolve the work force void in hospitals, saying the number of applicants matters more than the number of available slots.
An anonymous source cited by Yonhap News Agency on Monday said, “It appears that the majority of junior doctors will not apply for training as they have refused to return because of their opposition to the government’s policies.”
Medical professors at Kangwon National University Hospital demanded that the government immediately cancel the expansion of admissions quotas in medical schools. They said the government's health policies had devastated the regional medical system in Gangwon.
They said 20 professors have left the hospital since the conflict began between medical professionals and the government, and three more are set to resign next month. They said the government’s misguided policies prompted “dutiful doctors” to leave the province and “jeopardized the regional medical system.”
The professors claimed that their hospital and medical school have gotten so bad that proper education cannot be provided even when students and junior doctors return.
BY LEE SOO-JUNG [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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