Korean doctors are getting older… The average age of specialists is 50.1 years, down 3.6 years from 10 years ago.

Over the past 10 years, the number of specialists has increased by about 27,000, but the average age has increased by 3.6 years due to the aging population. During this period, the number of young specialists under the age of 40 decreased by 13.7%, and obstetrics and gynecology in particular plummeted by about 30%, showing that the problem of supply and demand for essential medical care was serious.

On the 8th, when Rep. Seo Young-seok (Democratic Party), a member of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee, looked at the number of doctors by medical field received from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, the total number of specialists as of last July was 148,250 and the average age was 50.1 years old. . Compared to 2014, 10 years ago, the number of specialists increased by 27,323 (22.6%), and the average age increased by 3.6 years.

The department with the highest average age was tuberculosis at 63.4 years old, followed by obstetrics and gynecology (54.4 years), preventive medicine (53.6 years), and urology (53.5 years). Departments where the average age has increased significantly compared to 10 years ago include urology (6.5 years), cardiovascular and thoracic surgery (5.6 years), tuberculosis (5.3 years), and obstetrics and gynecology (4.9 years).

As the average age of doctors has increased, the proportion of young specialists under 40 has decreased. The proportion of specialists under the age of 40, which accounted for 39.5% (47,817 out of 120,927) in 2014, decreased by 5.4 percentage points to 34.1% (50,567 out of 148,250) in July of this year.

The treatment subjects in which the number of specialists in their 40s or younger decreased were seven, including tuberculosis, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, preventive medicine, otolaryngology, and surgery. The tuberculosis department was a department created by policy in the past due to the large number of patients, but now the support rate has plummeted due to the rapid decrease in the number of patients, and some hospitals are not recruiting residents.

Among the departments of internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics, which are commonly referred to as essential medical services, the situation in obstetrics and gynecology was found to be particularly poor. In obstetrics and gynecology, the average age of specialists increased by 4.9 years, and the total number of specialists decreased by 2.4%. What is noteworthy is that the number of specialists under the age of 40 showed the largest decrease among essential medical services, at 28.1%.

Rep. Seo Young-seok said, “As the age of doctors changes along with changes in the domestic demographic structure, the number of retired doctors is increasing, but the number of new doctors is decreasing. As the demand for medical care increases in the future, we need to provide public medical services to provide sufficient medical services for each subject.” “We need to come up with measures to efficiently allocate resources, such as expansion,” he said.