[Desk Column] At this rate, Korean healthcare is really going to be ruined < Opinion < Article

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[Desk Column] At this rate, Korean healthcare is really going to be ruined < Opinion < Article

“We’re screwed.”


That’s the most common phrase in the medical community since February last year.


Since the government pushed to increase the medical school enrollment quota by 2,000, junior doctors have left training hospitals, and medical students have left schools. Nearly a year has since passed. None of the government’s “appeasement measures” have worked. This year, the number of new doctors plummeted to one-tenth and new specialists to less than one-fifth.


(Credit: Getty Images)
(Credit: Getty Images)


Policies that claim to address the workforce shortage in the medical field have exacerbated it. Burned-out professors and fellows are leaving university hospitals. The situation is even worse in essential medicine, which has been reduced to “barely functioning departments.”


Surgeries are often postponed because there are not enough surgeons or anesthesiologists.


Medical research has also begun to collapse. Doctors are so busy treating patients that they don’t have time for research, and there is even a fear of “zero papers” within the medical community.


All this shows where the K-Healthcare — which the government has hailed as the best worldwide – stands now.


The same is true for medical education. Medical education, the quality of which had been maintained by the medical community by voluntarily establishing the Korean Institute of Medical Education and Evaluation, has been shaken by government policies. The government is pushing for an increase of 2,000 students but remains silent on how to teach them.


In the first year of medical school in 2025, more than 7,500 students, including new and returning students, must take classes simultaneously.


That is, of course, if all the medical students who took a leave of absence return to school. Since the decision to increase the number of students by 2,000 was made, the medical education environment was bound to be like “a jar growing bean sprouts.” The government has promised to improve the education environment through bold support, but nothing has changed. There is no “medical education master plan” as the medical community demands.


Belatedly, the government announced that it would “review from the ground up” the number of medical school students for the 2026 academic year and even hinted at the possibility of “quota reductions” in a stopgap measure. However, that shows how haphazardly the medical school expansion policy was implemented. It was a policy that could have been withdrawn in a year.


Politicians say they want to solve the situation but can’t come up with a solution.


At the New Year ceremony held at the Korean Medical Association on Jan. 17, lawmakers from ruling and opposition parties attended and emphasized the need to resolve the medical crisis with one voice. The governing People Power Party said it felt responsible for the situation. However, again, missing was “how.” They did not say what and how much could be done to save healthcare and medical education, which were ruined in the past year, but only called for “talk.”


After the only person who can decide disappears from the scene, everyone passes the buck. Someone must take charge and devise a way to get everything back on track before it’s too late.


Otherwise, Korean healthcare will be ruined — really.

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