South Korean medical professors began submitting their resignations en masse on Monday (March 25) to support a trainee doctors’ strike over a government plan to boost medical school admissions.
“It is clear that increasing medical school admissions will not only ruin medical school education but cause our country’s healthcare system to collapse,” Kim Chang-soo, the president of the Medical Professors Association of Korea, told media on Monday.
Kim added that some professors will also start scaling back outpatient treatment to focus on emergency and severely ill patients. Kim did not say how many medical professors had already submitted their resignations.
The trainee doctors have been on strike since February 20, over a plan to increase the number of students admitted each year to medical school from 2025 which has forced several hospitals to turn back patients and delay procedures.
The government says the plan is vital to remedy a shortage of doctors in one of the world’s fastest-aging societies, but critics have said the authorities should focus on improving the working conditions of trainee doctors first.
(Source: Reuters)
