Cases of patient damage from doctors’ walkout pile up

Cases of patient damage are piling up, with an elderly woman dying of cardiac arrest without treatment, as trainee doctors have been away from work for the seventh day Monday in protest of the government’s medical school quota hike plan.

Concerns about a healthcare service crisis are growing as more than 9,000 intern and resident doctors have walked off their job at general hospitals across the nation in protest against the plan to raise medical school enrollment seats by 2,000 next year.

With no signs of a breakthrough between the government and doctors, major general hospitals in Seoul and elsewhere were grappling with the absence of trainee doctors, a core part of the workforce in hospital operations.

Surgery capacities have been halved from normal levels at many general hospitals, while some patients in need of emergent medical attention have been denied admission to hospitals, forcing them to wait hours for treatment.

In the central city of Daejeon, a woman in her 80s was emergently transported by an ambulance from her home in a state of cardiac arrest Friday. All seven hospitals contacted initially, however, refused to accept her, citing an absence of doctors in charge, a lack of hospital beds or other reasons.

By the time she finally arrived at a hospital 53 minutes after leaving home, she was pronounced dead.

Early on Monday morning, an ambulance transported another male patient in his 40s from his home in Daejeon for sudden convulsion, contacted eight hospitals for emergency admission, but all of them refused.

He was admitted to a general hospital only 37 minutes after leaving home.

In a similar incident, a foreign woman in her 30s had to wait for about three hours after leaving home in an ambulance Sunday due to stomachache and bleeding before being admitted to a hospital. A total of 14 hospitals contacted refused to admit her.

In the southeastern port city of Busan, a woman in her 70s had to be transported to a hospital in the nearby city of Changwon for treatment of her leg injuries last Wednesday after hospitals in her city refused to admit her.

According to the fire authorities in Daejeon, 23 cases of delayed emergency medical transportation have been reported in the city since last Tuesday, while the southeastern port city of Busan saw 42 such cases.

Doctors at general hospitals express concerns that already-strained hospital operations may suffer a fatal blow if fellowship-trained doctors follow suit and join the collective action as they have suggested.

“Hospital operations would practically come to a standstill if half of the fellowship-trained doctors, who have been filling the vacuum left by trainee doctors, depart the hospital when their contracts expire in March,” a professor at Chonnam National University Hospital told Yonhap News Agency.

It has been suggested that about half of the hospital’s 100 fellowship doctors may opt not to renew their contracts starting in March to join the collective action.

The government announced Monday that it could begin suspending the licenses of protesting trainee doctors unless they return to work soon, urging them to be back to their duties by Thursday.