Shortage of doctors looms as only 4.3% of new interns register for training

A sign for a female interns' room hangs on the wall of a major hospital in Daegu, Tuesday. Yonhap

Only 4.3 percent of new interns have actually registered for internship training amid the prolonged tensions between the government and the doctors’ community over the planned hike in the medical school quota, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Wednesday.

This is raising concerns over a worsening shortage of physicians, as the failure to train interns on time could create a domino effect that will eventually cause a fiasco in nurturing resident doctors and medical specialists.

Trainee doctors include both interns and resident doctors. Interns are the youngest trainee doctors who go through one-year training after acquiring doctors’ licenses and graduating from medical school.

After completing the internship, they move on to a residency program that requires training for three to four years in a certain discipline of their choosing, such as internal medicine or orthopedics, to become specialists in their respective areas.

According to the ministry, a total of 3,068 medical school graduates who acquire doctor’s licenses were supposed to begin internship training this year. But only 131 of them have actually registered for the program as of the Tuesday deadline.

The remaining 2,937 are now unable to train as interns in the first half of this year. Instead, they could start training only in September or next March.

In Severance Hospital, one of the nation's top five hospitals, only four out of 151 new interns registered for training, with others facing similar situations.

Doctors ride an escalator at a major hospital in Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap

These new interns’ refusal to begin the training is in line with a nationwide walkout by thousands of trainee doctors protesting the government’s plan to add 2,000 slots to next year's admissions quota for the country’s 40 medical schools.

The government said its policy is aimed at improving public access to medical services, but the doctors claimed that schools are not ready to teach such large numbers of incoming students and therefore the quota expansion could compromise the quality of medical education and training.

In Korea, interns or resident doctors can move on to the next step only after they complete their training for a required period.

A drastic decrease in the number of interns going through training this year will later lead to a fall in the number of those qualified to begin their residency. This will also make it more difficult to cultivate medical specialists.

“If hospitals fail to train interns this year, there will be no first-year residents next year,” Kim Dae-jung, a professor at Ajou University Hospital, wrote on social media. “This will deal a serious setback in supplying medical specialists in the next four to five years.”

The government shared the concerns over a shortage of medical specialists in the future.

“We will review additional measures,” Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo said during a media briefing.