The pass rate of the Korean medical licensing exam usually exceeds 95 percent. Late last year, over 96 percent of medical school graduates passed the state exam for the year 2023.
However, the case was not true for the University of Ulsan College of Medicine graduates. A whopping 25 percent of the test takers, or 10 out of the 40 graduates, failed to pass the clinical skills test, a second part of the medical licensing exam, in November 2022. The 10 graduates should wait for another year to take the licensing exam again.
The medical community expressed shock because the University of Ulsan reported a 100 percent pass rate in the clinical skills test for the years 2019, 2020, and 2022.
On the surface, the debacle is attributed to individual Ulsan medical students’ poor test preparations.
However, a bigger problem lies in the system of teaching hospitals that are so preoccupied with making profits that they neglect medical training for students at medical schools affiliated with them, an expert noted.
Asan Medical Center (AMC), known to be one of the top tertiary hospitals in Korea, is the teaching hospital for Ulsan medical school students.
Kim Jang-han, president of the medical school faculty members’ association, who is also a professor at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine, said that university hospitals including AMC put priority on medical care to raise revenue first. The research comes next, and training and education come last, he said.
“Considering the hospital's pressure on revenue and performance and the resulting incentive pay, it is not easy for many professors to engage in education with true enthusiasm,” Kim told Korea Biomedical Review.
“The college of medicine is like a sub-unit of the university hospital. So, the education has been put on the back burner.”
Kim also noted that medical education, in general, seemed to have lost its direction. As the amount of knowledge has increased so rapidly, professors should teach students to develop their own ability to study or to think in the right direction. However, they seemed to have lost it, he said.
He emphasized that university hospitals like AMC are failing clinical skills training, in particular.
“Clinical skills training is like a hospital tour for medical students. They can’t touch the patient’s body and there are so many restrictions,” Kim said.
Meanwhile, 11 medical schools reported a 100 percent pass rate in the latest state medical licensing exam. They are Gachon University College of Medical Science, Konkuk University College of Medicine, Daegu Catholic University College of Medicine, Yeungnam University College of Medicine, Eulji University School of Medicine, Wonkwang Health Science University, Inje University College of Medicine, Inha University College of Medicine, Jeju National University College of Medicine, Chungnam National University College of Medicine, and Hallym University College of Medicine.