Clinics, regional hospitals face staffing crisis as junior doctors return to training

As efforts to resolve the government-doctor conflict have led to tangible progress in having resigned junior doctors resume their training, the medical community is now facing new challenges.

Provincial hospitals and neighborhood clinics where resident doctors who resigned from their training hospitals have been working are poised to engage in a “hiring competition.”

A medical center in Gangwon Province is urgently recruiting emergency room staff. Two resident physicians who recently decided to resume training are set to leave the hospital soon. If they depart, only one emergency medicine specialist and one public health physician will remain. For the medical center, which must maintain 24-hour emergency room services, this poses a significant burden.

“It is fortunate that the resident physicians can return to their training hospitals. However, as a regional medical center facing difficulties in securing staff, we are indeed concerned about the future operation of the emergency room,” the medical center’s director said. “I believe other provincial medical centers are in a similar situation.”

The hospital director still expressed a hope. “I wish the current situation to serve as an opportunity to raise awareness about the reality of regional and public healthcare, which relies on temporary workforce like resigned residents and public health doctors, leading to more constructive solutions.”

The emergency room at a hospital in South Jeolla Province also struggles to find replacements for the specialists who are resigning. If the resigned trainee doctors leave, the hospital will be left with only one emergency medicine specialist and one general practitioner, forcing them to maintain 24/7 emergency care. Even before the resignations, the hospital had struggled to find applicants despite offering hundreds of millions of won as an annual salary.

“Given the dire situation in the emergency room, the resigned resident who had been working here couldn't easily bring up the possibility of returning,” the hospital’s director said. “The fault lies with the government and its policies, yet the hospital and the resigned junior doctors find themselves in a situation where they feel guilty even when there is good news.”

The situation is no different in private clinics. Since President Lee Jae Myung took office, expectations for the resumption of resident training have grown, but so have concerns about filling the vacancies left by resigned junior doctors. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, as of March, 60.3 percent (3,258 out of 5,399) of residents who had resigned or declined appointments were working at neighborhood clinics.

If these residents apply for the resident recruitment in the second half of the year (September), it would mean that neighborhood clinics nationwide will simultaneously begin large-scale hiring. A director of an internal medicine clinic in the Seoul metro region said, “The recruitment period is far too short to meet their returning deadline of September. Even clinics that started employment as early as April and May are finding it difficult to hire.”

Another internal medicine clinic director expressed a similar concern.

“Due to the government-doctor conflict, the output of specialists has also come to a halt, leaving neighborhood clinics with a sudden disappearance of the workforce pool,” she said. “While the resolution of the conflict and the resumption of training are welcome developments, we cannot simply sit back and celebrate. The aftermath will continue for some time.”