Health and Welfare Minister Park Neung-hoo and Korea Medical Association (KMA) President Choi Dae-zip visited the funeral home of a psychiatrist who was killed by a patient during a consultation at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, on Monday.Accompanying KMA Vice President Park Hong-jun and General Director Jeong Seong-gyun, Choi paid tribute to Lim Se-won, the late psychiatrist at Kangbuk Samsung, at
Not only the medical community but the entire Korean society is at a loss for words at the beginning of the New Year because of a patient’s stabbing a psychiatrist to death during a medical consultation.The patient reportedly visited the hospital without a reservation almost at the end of the consultation service. The doctor had little time to escape because he first helped nurses run away, ne
The Korean medical community and Oriental medicine practitioners expressed different views on how to pursue inter-Korean healthcare cooperation. While doctors argued that official development assistance (ODA) should be the key method, the Oriental medicine community said economic cooperation would be more beneficial to both Koreas. The two sides revealed differences at
Samsung Medical Center (SMC) and the Ministry of Health and Welfare are resuming a legal fight over whether the hospital should pay compensation to the government for the damage of the MERS outbreak in 2015. The ministry on Tuesday appealed the court’s ruling which was made in favor of the Samsung hospital on Nov. 29. “We appealed the decision because we could not accept the ruling,” said an
The Korean government said it would designate artificial intelligence (AI)-based new drug development and healthcare innovation as national tasks for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.The Ministry of Health and Welfare and other related ministries finalized the “Strategies for Healthcare Advancement based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution” at a meeting by a presidential committee on the Fourt
The medical community expressed intense anger against a bill, which aims to give the state health insurance agency special judicial rights to investigate hospitals run under a borrowed name of a doctor.Doctors demanded Rep. Song Ki-hun of the ruling Democratic Party, who proposed the bill, step down immediately. They even requested the government to dismantle the National Health Insurance Serv
Augmented reality, an interactive experience in a real world with additional information created by virtual images onto real images, is drawing attention in the medical field as it helps raise surgical safety. Professor Chai Young-jun’s research team at Seoul Metropolitan Government-Seoul National University Boramae Medical Center and Professor Kim Hee-chan’s team at the Medical Electronics La
Korea is not safe from the overuse problem of opioids anymore, a survey showed Tuesday. The pollsters called for the health authorities to control the abuse of narcotic analgesics strictly. Seoul National University Hospital’s research team, led by Professor Moon Jee-youn at the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, surveyed 258 patients who received prescriptions of narcotic ana
A former director general of the Ministry of Health and Welfare received a prison term for receiving substantial kickbacks and entertainment from Gachon Univesity Gil Medical Center.The Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday sentenced the ex-government official, who had been indicted on charges of bribery, to eight years in prison and a fine of 400 million won ($357,000), along with 350 milli
The Korean Medical Association said it has referred a professor at Jeju National University Hospital to its central ethics committee for allegedly assaulting and verbally abusing hospital employees for years.The KMA’s board of directors made the decision at a meeting on Wednesday.On Tuesday, the Jeju branch of the Korean Healthcare Workers' Trade Union (KHWU) under the Korean Confederation
A professor at Jeju National University Hospital’s rehabilitation center has verbally and physically abused hospital employees for years, a healthcare workers’ labor union said.The Jeju branch of the Korean Healthcare Workers' Trade Union (KHWU) under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions revealed video footage of the female professor attacking medical staffs on its Facebook page on Tuesday
Korean Medical Association said it has decided to take a stern measure against unlicensed medical acts and ghost surgeries at a hospital in Paju, Gyeonggi Province.KMA President Choi Dae-zip on Tuesday pressed charges against the hospital’s head, administrative director, and a medical device salesperson, with the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office.At the hospital in Paju, north of Seoul, the admi
More than 7,000 physicians protested on Sunday a court’s sentencing of jail terms on three doctors for misdiagnosing and causing the death of a child. They demanded the government build a safer environment to practice medicine.The Korea Medical Association held a rally, titled “Setting Right the Korean Healthcare,” in front of the Deoksu Palace, central Seoul. Doctors criticized
Three doctors were sentenced to prison terms for making misdiagnosis and causing the death of a child who visited hospitals four times because of a stomachache. The Seongnam branch of Suwon District Court Wednesday passed a sentence of one year and six months on one of the three doctors indicted with the charge of professional negligence resulting in death. It also handed down the sentence of
South Korea’s guidelines for the treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are outdated compared to those by the World Health Organization (WHO), a lawmaker said.At the parliamentary audit on Thursday, Rep. Kim Myung-yeon of the opposition Liberty Korea Party said the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) was “too passive” to update the nation’s guidelines in acc
Under severe criticism for a recent series of ghost surgeries, the medical community is expected to tackle the issue soon aggressively.The Korean Medical Association (KMA) held an emergency meeting with surgical societies and clinic-running physicians to discuss how to root out the unlicensed medical practice, at the Sheraton Seoul Palace Gangnam Hotel in Seoul, Sunday. “Any phy
Korean Medical Association (KMA) has apologized for the controversy caused by a recent series of ghost surgeries but stressed the need for the right to punish its members. “We cannot repress shock and astonishment for some medical professionals unlawfully let unqualified people, including salespeople of medical equipment manufacturers, took part in surgeries or even allowing them to conduct an
The Seoul National University Hospital said its researchers have developed a new model to predict the risk of transplant or death in hepatitis A-related liver failure.Professors Kim Yoon-jun and Cho Eun-ju at the SNUH and Professor Kim Jin-dong at Halla Hospital in Jeju led a research team from 2007 to 2013 to design a model to check early prognostic factors and predict the risk of transpl
A provincial court sentenced a jail term to a drunk patient who used violence to threaten medical workers at an emergency room in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province.The Cheongju District Court ordered the patient, who was indicted for violating the Emergency Medical Service Act, six-month imprisonment and a two-year probation. The court also ordered 200 hours of social service.The prosec
The police have arrested a physician operating a famous plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam after allegedly administering propofol himself at the clinic during the national Chuseok holiday last month. Propofol is used for general anesthesia.The news sent shock waves across the medical community as the plastic surgeon serves as director of the Korean Association of Plastic Surgeons.Gangnam Po