Changes in the medical workforce structure brought about by the policy to expand medical schools are causing turmoil in hospitals.

In February last year, many trainee doctors resigned to protest the government's policy to increase the medical school enrollment quota, followed by the mass departure of fellows. Hospitals hired “salaried doctors” to fill their vacancies. However, this increased the sense of deprivation among medical professors.

Salaried doctors refer to physicians—specialists and general practitioners—who neither remain in university hospitals nor open clinics but work mainly at general hospitals and receive salaries.

Confusion occurs in the medical field because hospitals hire salaried doctors to fill the workforce void, but these employed physicians fail to lessen the workload of professors.

Even if hospitals recruit salaried doctors, medical professors still have no choice but to take on emergencies or severe cases. As a result, professors who have been taking turns serving as on-call doctors and providing outpatient care for more than a year have recently been forced to “stop practicing” due to fatigue.

“Trainee doctors resigned, and fellows also left hospitals. Hospitals recruited salaried doctors, but we can hardly let them perform operations with high severity or risk,” said a professor at a Seoul university hospital requesting anonymity for privacy. “These employed doctors also want to be treated as such regarding working hours and wages. As a result, the existing professors are assigned to high-risk surgeries while employed doctors are assigned to simpler tasks.”

“Professors who used to work at universities also leave because they don't want to work with severe or emergency cases. If hospitals want to hire people again, they must match the market situation,” he said. “We have no choice but to allow employed physicians to be free of on-call duty and let them handle patients whose severity is not relatively higher than those treated by professors.”

Moreover, as the “price tag” for employed physicians rises, more and more faculty members complain of relative deprivation. Professors who have endured without trainee doctors and fellows for over a year began to discuss “resigning.”

“The workload of existing professors is inevitably heavy. If you are on call and have an outpatient clinic the next day, you must see patients,” the professor said. “I've been doing a rat race like this for over a year. I feel like I'm in a tunnel with no end in sight. I don’t know how long I will live like this.”

Another professor at a university hospital in Busan, also wanting to remain anonymous, said, “We have no manpower, so we must hire salaried doctors to fill the gap. However, our hospital must pay them a high salary to recruit them. There is a great disparity among professors because hired doctors are paid more and have more comfortable jobs than existing professors.”

“I'm already burned out. Some professors are willing to quit teaching and turn themselves into salaried doctors because they have no trainees to teach, and the sense of relative deprivation is growing,” the professor said. “Some professors move from private university hospitals to national university hospitals because they are treated better in the provinces. In contrast, others are moving to university hospitals in Seoul. I can only sigh at the situation.”