“Essential healthcare” has emerged as the most prominent topic of Korea’s medical community in 2022, replacing Covid-19. However, that was not the only controversy this year. As the political power changed through the presidential election in March, significant changes were also predicted in health and medical policies. Old controversies, including the permission of “new medical schools,” were repeated. Korea Biomedical Review summed them up into the top-five health and medical news. -- Ed.

Long-standing worries about the collapse of the department of pediatrics and adolescents have become a reality. Due to the failure to meet the quota of medical residents, the supply of specialists has stopped. As a result of recruiting specialists for the first half of 2023, the number of applicants for the department stood at a mere 33. Hospitals wanted to recruit 207 pediatric specialists, so the competition rate remained at 15.9 percent.

Experts had predicted that it would not take long for concerns about the collapse of the children’s medical care to turn into a reality. But, unfortunately, their prediction proved more than correct.

Gachon University Gil Medical Center, one of the five-largest hospitals in the number of beds, announced that it would temporarily suspend the hospitalization service at the pediatric department due to the shortage of specialists on its website last month.

According to the hospital, it will have only one sophomore pediatric resident when the senior residents begin to prepare for exams to be specialists.

Initially, there were seven pediatric specialists on the hospital’s website.

The application rate for pediatric specialists has declined over the past five years. The department managed to fill the quota until 2019. Then, however, the rate turned downward to 78.5 percent in recruitment for 2020, 37.3 percent for 2021, and 27.5 percent for 2022 before hitting the bottom of 15.9 percent for 2023.

Pediatrics said the Gil Medical Center is not the only hospital facing the collapse of children’s care due to manpower shortage. Already, many hospitals have stopped internal medicine services for children in their emergency rooms or limited service time.

According to a survey by the Korean Pediatric Society on training hospitals, only 36 percent of respondents said that regular, 24-hour emergency care for children and adolescents is possible. Moreover, in three-quarters of the hospitals, professors go on duty, and only 27 percent had one or more children doctors specializing in the hospitalization service.

In addition, the other three-quarters of these hospitals replied that curtailing treatment is inevitable as the application rate plunged to 15.9 percent.

The society called for government support to maintain the application rate of 50 percent. It then said the other 50 percent should turn into a pediatric specialist-oriented treatment system.

“When the ship sinks, the water comes in slowly at first, but it sinks rapidly before sinking. The water is full enough now. Pediatric specialists will remain until the last ship sinks to protect (the children),” said Rha Yeong-hwa, head of the society. “However, at least we hope something else comes before it sinks completely."