The government has begun conducting the “Multi-Institutional Cooperative Training Pilot Project” for junior doctors, designating the Korean Hospital Association (KHA) as its auxiliary partner.

The pilot project, which is being promoted as one of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration's healthcare reform measures, aims to build a multi-institutional cooperative training model so that trainee doctors can experience various clinical sites and regional medical environments. A budget of 1.1 billion won ($770,790) has been set aside this year.

Through the pilot project, the government plans to organize and operate a training network centered on tertiary general hospitals, letting trainee doctors experience regional and public healthcare in conjunction with the collaborative treatment system.

Specifically, a tertiary general hospital will be responsible for training and forming a network with around five training partners. Partner hospitals are medical institutions at general hospital levels and smaller institutions, including specialized hospitals and provincial medical centers.

Participating hospitals must include three of the eight departments targeted for training environment innovation support—internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and adolescence, emergency medicine, cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, neurology, and neurosurgery—and the duration of cooperative training must be within six months per session.

Through the pilot project, the government will support selecting leading networks among the participating networks, program development and operation costs per network, dispatch allowance for specialists at participating hospitals, allowance for supervising specialists, and operating costs for dispatch training.

However, the government is expected to face a backlash from the medical community as it moves forward with establishing a multi-institutional cooperative training system. Concerns about establishing a cooperative training system were also raised at a debate in August last year, titled “How to improve the training of junior doctors,” held by the Special Committee on Healthcare Reform.

Professors of pediatrics, obstetrics, and gynecology argued that a multi-institutional cooperative training system is impossible to build in some areas without children due to the declining birth rate and child population.

Critics also pointed out that it is premature to build a multi-institutional cooperative training system when the current system is not working properly, and the government should first improve the training system at university hospitals.

In contrast, the program’s proponents noted that many exemplary programs already allow trainee doctors to experience various patients through similar training and that this would provide a good opportunity for trainee doctors to solve problems, including problems in the reimbursement system and various accidents that occur during training.

However, many pointed out that reorganizing the training system for trainee doctors is meaningless when most of the resigned junior doctors have not returned.

“It makes no sense to discuss multi-institutional cooperation when most of the resigned doctors have not returned and are unlikely to return this year,” an official at a provincial university hospital told Korea Biomedical Review over the phone. “The government must focus on returning the resigned doctors to the hospital rather than improving the training environment.”