Trainee doctors show little signs of returning as hospitals set to complete accepting their resignations
A patient walks into a university hospital in Seoul, June 12. Yonhap
Trainee doctors appeared to have shown little signs of returning to work as hospitals were set to complete accepting their resignations on Monday, despite the government's proposal of an olive branch to end a prolonged walkout.
Accepting resignations would help trainee doctors, who have left their worksites since late February in protest of the government's medical reform, find jobs at other hospitals.
The Monday deadline is seen as crucial for the government to help persuade trainee doctors to return to hospitals as it is linked to a timetable to hire trainee doctors in September.
If trainee doctors do not respond to the move of accepting their resignations by the deadline, they will be automatically resigned, according to government officials.
It remains to be seen how many striking trainee doctors would return to work.
A trainee doctor who submitted a resignation at a hospital in Seoul said most junior doctors seemed to be "blase" to the government's proposal.
A professor at a state-run hospital also said there have been little signs that most trainee doctors would return to work.
Medical doctors walk along a hallway of a university hospital in Seoul, July 8. Yonhap
More than 12,000 trainee doctors, over 90 percent of the total, have been on strike in the form of mass resignations since Feb. 20 in protest of the government's medical school admissions quota hike.
Last week, the government decided to withdraw all punitive measures against trainee doctors defying return-to-work orders.
It also allowed trainee doctors who reapply for the training program starting in September to receive special treatment, such as an exemption from the rule prohibiting repeat applications to a department within the same year.
Meanwhile, medical professors criticized the government for allowing hospitals to automatically accept the resignations of junior doctors.
"Processing resignations unilaterally without receiving responses from individual trainee doctors on their intention to return or quit will only deteriorate the situation," three groups of medical professors said in a joint statement. (Yonhap)