Hospitals to seek additional recruitment for trainee doctors amid sluggish applications

South Korea’s health ministry said Thursday that it will have hospitals roll out another recruitment notice for trainee doctors this month, following a lackluster response from the medical community to the initial round that ended the previous day.

The announcement came as only 104 candidates applied for trainee doctor programs starting in September, while local hospitals sought to find trainees for 7,645 new positions, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

The number of applicants accounts for just 1.4 percent of the positions available.

Among the 126 training hospitals that received applications, the country’s top five hospitals received 45 of them, or 43.5 percent of the total.

The five hospitals — Asan Medical Center, Samsung Medical Center, Severance Hospital, Seoul National University Hospital and Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital — play a key role in providing medical care for critically ill patients.

“To provide as many opportunities as possible and induce junior doctors’ return, we plan to implement supplementary recruitment in August,” the health ministry said in a statement.

Local hospitals have recently processed resignations from thousands of trainee doctors protesting the medical school quota hike, allowing departing doctors to find new jobs and enabling hospitals to recruit fresh trainees.

Amid slim prospects for a compromise between the government and the medical community, however, some professors have vowed to boycott the training of new applicants, calling on the government to fully abandon the reform plan before engaging in any negotiations.