Medical professors up threat to resign en masse

Professors from medical schools nationwide have begun to contemplate whether to submit resignations in collective action pressuring the government to seek a breakthrough in the protracted walkout by trainee doctors, a medical professors’ group said Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, medical professors from 19 universities met online, decided to form a joint emergency response committee and resolved to decide at their respective schools by Friday whether to collectively submit resignations.

The 19 schools include Seoul National University, Yonsei University, University of Ulsan, the Catholic University of Korea and Pusan National University.

Each participating medical school will collect opinions from its professors and teaching doctors and come up with a decision by Friday on whether they would submit resignations en masse.

The emergency committee will then determine during its next session when the collective submission of resignations by willing medical professors nationwide will take place, the committee said.

“The goal of our emergency committee is to have medical students and trainee doctors, who are the future of South Korea’s health care, safely return to work to finish their education and training,” the committee said, calling for an opportunity for negotiations with the government.

Earlier this week, medical school professors at Seoul National University resolved to submit resignations en masse next week if no “reasonable breakthrough” is sought by the government.

The medical school faculty of the University of Ulsan also made a similar resolution, and with the launch of the emergency committee, more medical professors from other universities are predicted to follow suit in collective action.

The latest move came amid escalating tensions between the government and medical circles over the plan to hike the medical school enrollment quota by 2,000 seats beginning next year to address a chronic shortage of doctors in rural areas and essential but less popular medical fields.

More than 90 percent of the country’s 13,000 intern and resident doctors have stayed off their duties at general hospitals nationwide for over three weeks in protest, while thousands of medical students joined the protest by filing for leave of absence en masse.

The government is adamant about its 2,000-seat increase plan and has begun to take steps to suspend the medical licenses of thousands of protesting trainee doctors who defy the official back-to-work order.

Without a breakthrough in the near future, medical professors fear that striking trainee doctors and protesting medical students could derail their training programs or result in failing grades.

Medical professors’ threatened mass departure from schools and hospitals, if realized, could deal a fatal blow to the health care services already crippled by the trainee doctors’ collective action.

Many still say medical professors are realistically unlikely to leave hospitals en masse, interpreting their resolution for collective action as a gesture urging for a breakthrough from the government.

Patients’ and their families’ frustration is escalating, however, amid talks of medical professors submitting mass resignations.

A woman scheduled for thyroid surgery next week at a general hospital in Seoul expressed anxieties over the latest action by medical professors.

“What should I do if all professors at Seoul National University Hospital and other hospitals resign?” she said. “I am very nervous about if I would be able to undergo my surgery as scheduled.”

From Feb. 19 until Monday, 472 cases of patient damage from the trainee doctors’ walkout had been filed with authorities, including 329 delayed surgeries and dozens of cancelled or denied medical treatments.