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| Na Soon-ja, left, the head of the Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union, and Kwon Deok-cheol, the minister of health and welfare, hold their documented agreement after their last-ditch negotiations at the Korea Institute for Healthcare Accreditation in Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap |
By Jun Ji-hye
The government is facing a pile of tasks to implement an agreement it reached with unionized healthcare workers to improve their working conditions amid their worsening burnout and fatigue due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic that began early last year.
Though the agreement stopped the workers' plan to go on a general strike, the possibility remains that conflict between the two sides could arise again at any time during the process of implementing the agreement, which could deal a heavy blow to the country's medical system amid no signs of a slowdown in coronavirus infections.
The Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union, associated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, called off their planned strike, Thursday, just about five hours before the strike was set to begin, as they reached the agreement with the government at 2:10 a.m. after their 11-hour last-ditch negotiations that began the day before.
The union represents nurses, pharmacists, care workers and most other healthcare-related workers other than doctors.
The agreement centered on expanding public health services and infrastructure, and giving better treatments to front-line nurses and healthcare workers, which requires budget and system improvements.
As part of the first steps to implement the agreement, the government needs to draw up detailed measures by October on how to assign nurses based on the severity of patients' condition.
The union holds that two nurses should be assigned for one patient in critical condition, and one nurse per patient in less severe condition or mild-case patients with Alzheimer's disease or mental illness. For all other patients with mild conditions, the union has asked for one nurse per five such patients.
"It is true that nurses here have been required to handle a relatively high number of patients compared to developed countries," said Lee Chang-joon who in charge of healthcare policies at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. "We are aiming to reduce the number of patients per nurse."
As for measures to enhance public services, the government vowed to set up four regional hospitals dedicated to infectious diseases by 2024 and build public hospitals in six regions including Ulsan and Gwangju in cooperation with local governments.
Other measures include the establishment of a state-run medical school. But this has been opposed by a doctors' group, which took collective action last year against the government's push to increase admission quotas at medical schools, plus other thorny issues including the plan to set up the aforementioned state-run medical school.
This could become another seed of conflict in the future.
"The government unilaterally agreed with the Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union, without prior consultation with the Korea Medical Association (KMA)," the KMA said in its statement, Thursday.
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