One-thousand-and-two medical residents have applied to the "Big 5" hospitals for specialty training. It’s about a quarter of the total trainee doctors.
However, even the Big 5 hospitals could not avoid the polarization of applications for specialties. The five largest hospitals headquartered in Seoul also suffered from a shortage of applicants in areas such as pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, and cardiovascular and thoracic surgery.
The Korean Doctors Weekly, a sister paper of Korea Biomedical Review, surveyed 75 major training hospitals on Wednesday, the last recruitment day for first-year residents in the first half of 2024. It found that 32 hospitals, or 42.7 percent, failed to fill their quotas. The total number of residents assigned to the 75 training hospitals was 3,159, or 91.2 percent of their combined recruitment capacity of 3,464.
The Big 5 hospitals, on the other hand, had applicants exceeding their quotas. A total of 1,002 applicants applied to the Big 5 hospitals, allotted with 798 quotas, 23.0 percent of the total, resulting in a 1.25-to-1 competition ratio. It is higher than the 1.18-to-1 ratio last year. That also means 30 percent of the total 3,389 applicants applied to Seoul's five largest hospitals.
Samsung Medical Center (SMC) showed the highest application rate among the five hospitals, with 158 applicants for 114 positions, marking a 138.6 percent application rate. Following SMC was the Catholic University of Korea Catholic Medical Center, which had 298 applicants for 225 positions, a 132.4 percent application rate.
Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) had 214 applicants for 172 positions (124.4n percent), and Asan Medical Center had 154 applicants for 124 positions (124.2 percent).
Severance Hospital, which was the only one of the Big 5 hospitals that failed to fill its quota last year, had 178 applicants for 163 positions (109.2 percent) this year.
While the Big 5 hospitals attracted 1,002 trainee doctors for specialty training, applications were heavily weighted toward popular departments. Pediatrics was not spared even by the Big 5 hospitals.
Among the Big 5 hospitals, Asan Medical Center (AMC) was the only one to fill its pediatrics recruitment quota. AMC has 10 pediatricians assigned to it, but 12 applicants applied (120.0 percent).
SNUH and SMC were also "successful" in recruiting pediatricians. SNUH had 15 applicants for its 17 pediatrics positions, while SMC had seven applicants for its nine positions, resulting in 88.2 percent and 77.8 percent application rates, respectively.
Catholic Medical Center (CMC), which has Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, recruited 10 pediatricians through the total quota system per hospital group, but only four applicants applied. CMC implements an integrated training system that jointly selects and trains doctors from affiliated hospitals.
There were no applicants for the pediatrics department at Severance (10 positions). The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Severance also failed to recruit a specialist because there were no applicants.
AMC was the only among Big-5 hospitals that filled its quota for the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery Department, one of the most shunned specialties. The department had six applicants for five positions. Three applicants applied for four positions (75.0 percent) at Severance, and two applied for four positions at SMC, making it only half-filled. SNUH had only one applicant for four positions.
The Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at CMC, which was recruiting for five specialists, had no applicants, and only eight out of 15 surgeons (53.3 percent) applied for its Department of Surgery. Except for CMC, the surgery departments at four other hospitals saw excess applicants even after filling their quotas.
Family medicine departments also failed to fill their quotas. Severance was the "winner" with nine applicants for 11 family medicine positions. SNUH had 14 applicants for 20 positions, SMC had three applicants for five positions, and CMC had six applicants for 10 positions. AMC had only one applicant for five positions.
On the other hand, the six favorite departments -- dermatology, ophthalmology, plastic surgery, psychiatry, rehabilitation, and radiology -- were also popular at the Big 5 hospitals. Competition was fierce, with two to three times as many applicants as positions available. Otolaryngology and orthopedics also attracted more than double the number of applicants.