The interns who collectively resigned last year in protest of the expansion of medical school quotas will return to the medical field starting tomorrow. The more than a year and a half gap in interns is expected to ease, providing relief for hospital operations.
According to the medical community on the 31st, the interns selected for the second half recruitment at training hospitals last month will begin their training from the 1st of next month. The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to compile the recruitment results from hospitals nationwide and announce them early next week. Although the exact scale of the return has not yet been tallied, it is reported that many of the interns who resigned in protest against the increase of 2,000 medical school quotas last year are returning.
The application rate for the second half recruitment at Seoul's 'Big 5' hospitals reached between 60% and 80%. While some candidates were eliminated, the fill rate generally exceeded 70%. A representative from a large hospital in Seoul noted, "Most of the resigned interns who applied for return were accepted, and some new interns among the applicants were eliminated." However, some of the candidates returning to the emergency medicine department at Severance Hospital received notifications of elimination.
While there are differences between hospitals, overall, more than half have chosen to return, which is expected to aid operations. However, it appears that the interns will not return to the same conditions as before. During the past year and a half, hospitals have adapted to the absence of interns by improving their systems centered on specialists and utilizing physician assistants (PAs). Therefore, even if not all interns return, a certain degree of recovery in hospital functions will be possible.
The government plans to review whether to lift the 'serious' level of the health care disaster alert maintained since last year once hospital operations stabilize after the return of the interns.
The work of improving the training environment, which is a key demand of the interns, will also continue. The government is currently piloting a project to reduce the weekly working hours from 80 to 72 and the continuous working hours from 36 to 20, while discussions on related bills are ongoing in the National Assembly.
However, the imbalance in the placement of interns between the metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, as well as between essential and non-essential subjects, remains an ongoing issue. The percentage of interns working in the metropolitan area was 64% at the end of 2023, but it increased to 67.4% in the first half of this year. The application rate for non-metropolitan area interns this second half is relatively low at 50% to 60%, which could widen the gap further. Within Seoul National University Hospital, the application rates for some departments such as emergency medicine, pediatrics, and thoracic surgery are below average. In regional hospitals, some emergency medicine interns have returned at a rate of less than half before their resignation.
Minister Jeong Eun-kyung stated in the National Assembly, "Ultimately, fundamental measures are needed to provide compensation for local and essential medical services, such as fees and to strengthen legal stability."