An undated photo of trainee doctors at a hospital in Seoul. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 21 (Korea Bizwire) – More than 70 percent of trainee doctors have submitted their resignations in protest of a plan to boost the number of medical students, officials said Wednesday, with the government ordering about 6,000 of them to return to work.
Concerns have heightened as doctors and the government were in a collision course over the plan to raise the medical school admission quota by 2,000 seats next year.
As of Tuesday, a total of 8,816 trainee doctors, or 71.2 percent of the junior doctors, had submitted their resignations and 7,813 of them left their work sites, Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told reporters.
Park said the government ordered 6,112 trainee doctors to return to work. So far, the ministry has received 58 complaints in connection with the trainee doctors’ collective resignations.
Surgeries have been canceled and some patients were forced to be transferred to other hospitals as trainee doctors stopped working for the second day in a row Wednesday.
(Yonhap)
