Gov’t to suspend doctor licenses starting next week

Mar 22, 2024, 09:00 am

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Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo speaks during a briefing held in Seoul on March 21, 2024./ Source: Yonhap News

AsiaToday reporter Jung Min-hoon

The government will begin suspending medical licenses of trainee doctors who have defied a return-to-work order from next week.

“Starting next week, the government will take measures to suspend licenses under the principle regarding violation of the return-to-work order,” Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told reporters on Thursday.

The health ministry urged trainee doctors to return to work as soon as possible. “We urge junior doctors to return to their training hospitals, not only for the sake of patients, but for your colleagues who are filling in for your vacancies, and for yourselves who have chosen the career of medicine,” Park said.

The health ministry stressed that if trainee doctors return to work early, the disposition could be applied in an advantageous way, adding that interns who fail to register in the training management system of hospitals by the end of this month will not be eligible to become residents next year.

Meanwhile, medical school professors announced its members would reduce their weekly work hour to 52 hours starting next Monday, citing their overwork that could endanger patients’ health. “Patients are being exposed to danger as fatigue among professors is building up,” Cho Yun-jung, an official at the Medical Professors Association of Korea, said. The group also said its members would minimize outpatient treatment beginning April 1 to focus on severely ill and emergency patients.

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