(Health Korea News / Lee Chang-yong) Due to the government’s increase in medical school enrollment, the number of hospitals that can operate emergency rooms without problems has decreased by 60.3% compared to last year as residents and doctors are leaving the field.
The Korean Medical School Professors’ Association (KMA) announced on the 12th that in a survey containing these results, 13.2% (7 locations) of emergency rooms had less than 5 doctors on duty, which meant that partial closure was being considered.
The emergency medicine department operates on a three-shift system, with 8-hour shifts in the morning, afternoon, and night, for a total of 168 hours per week. If this is divided among 5 doctors, it comes to 33.5 hours per week, and if you add in holidays and vacations, it comes to about 40 hours.
However, this is a story about emergency medicine doctors seeing outpatients for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It is physically and stamina-wise impossible. In addition to treatment, professors also do various activities such as education, academic research, and volunteer work. This means that it is impossible to work normally with 5 people.
The Korean Medical Association surveyed the number of doctors working in emergency rooms at 53 hospitals nationwide between the 10th and 11th of this month. As a result, only 16 hospitals, or 30.2% of the total, were able to operate emergency rooms normally with more than 12 doctors on duty. This is a whopping 60% decrease from the 90.6% rate of emergency rooms operating normally last year.
The total number of doctors working in emergency rooms decreased by 388, or 42.1%, from 922 to 534. The number of specialists decreased by 27, from 528 to 501, but the Korean Medical Association explained that this was due to the increase in hospitals due to policies such as pediatric emergency rooms.
Among the 53 hospitals, 29 hospitals (54.7%) saw a decrease in the number of specialists, 12 hospitals (22.6%) saw no change, and 12 hospitals (22.6%) saw an increase in the number of specialists. It was confirmed that the number of specialists decreased in more than half of the hospitals.
The number of specialists (general practitioners) decreased by 91.4% from 384 to 33. It is noteworthy that 11 hospitals had a decrease of more than 60%, and 10 hospitals had a decrease of 50% to less than 60%, and 21 hospitals, which account for 39.6% of the total, had a decrease of less than 50% of the number of doctors working in emergency rooms compared to 2023.
By region, Chungcheong, Busan, Gwangju-Jeonnam regions decreased by more than 50%, Gangwon, Jeonbuk, Daegu-Gyeongbuk, and Ulsan-Gyeongnam regions decreased by more than 40%. In the metropolitan area, northern Gyeonggi showed 41.4%, Seoul 39.2%, southern Gyeonggi 35.8%, and Incheon 8.9%. Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon showed the smallest decrease of 35.7%.
The number of specialists decreased by 27.9% in Chungcheong, 13.6% in Gwangju and Jeonnam, 12.8% in Daegu and Gyeongbuk, and 11.4% in Busan, which is a decrease of more than 10% compared to last year, and there were increases in some metropolitan areas. Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon only decreased by 0.3%, showing little change.
In particular, it was found that there were 32 emergency medicine doctors in 5 hospitals in the Busan area. The average number of doctors per hospital was 6.4, which was the worst working environment compared to other regions.
An official from the Korean Medical Association said, “Last year, based on a three-shift system, there was one hospital with one person on duty in the emergency room for eight hours, and four hospitals with two people on duty partially. All 48 hospitals were found to have more than 12 people on duty, so there were no problems with operating the emergency rooms,” and criticized the government’s excessive increase in medical schools for causing the current medical crisis.
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