{"id":3559,"date":"2024-03-11T10:18:35","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T04:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usbnews24.com\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2024-03-11T13:26:17","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T07:26:17","slug":"s-korea-begins-suspending-licences-of-4900-striking-doctors-leaves-door-open-for-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/?p=3559","title":{"rendered":"S. Korea begins suspending licences of 4,900 striking doctors; leaves door open for dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"content-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"text\">\n<div class=\"text-long\">\n<p>South Korea said on Monday (Mar 11) it had started procedures to suspend the medical licences of 4,900 junior doctors who have resigned and stopped working to protest government medical training reforms, causing healthcare chaos.<\/p>\n<p>The walkout, which started on Feb 20, is over government plans to sharply increase the number of doctors, which it says is essential to combat shortages and South Korea&#8217;s rapidly ageing population, while the medics argue it will erode service quality.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 12,000 junior doctors \u2013 93 per cent of the trainee workforce \u2013 were not in their hospitals at the last count, despite\u00a0government back to work orders\u00a0and\u00a0threats of legal action, forcing Seoul to\u00a0mobilise military medics and millions of dollars in state reserves to help.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"content-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"text\">\n<div class=\"text-long\">\n<p>The health ministry on Monday said it had sent administrative notifications \u2013 the first step to suspending the doctors&#8217; medical licences \u2013 to thousands of trainee doctors after they defied specific orders telling them to return to their hospitals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As of Mar 8 (notifications) have been sent to more than 4,900 trainee doctors,&#8221; Chun Byung-wang, director of the health and medical policy division at the health ministry, told reporters.<\/p>\n<p>The government has previously warned striking doctors they face a three-month suspension of their licences, a punishment which, it says, will delay their ability to qualify as specialists by at least a year.<\/p>\n<p>Chun urged the striking medics to return to their patients.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The government will take into account the circumstance and protect trainee doctors if they return to work before the administrative measure is complete,&#8221; he said, indicating doctors who come back to work now could avoid the punishment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea said on Monday (Mar 11) it had started procedures to suspend the medical licences of 4,900 junior doctors who have resigned and stopped working to protest government medical training reforms, causing healthcare chaos. The walkout, which started on Feb 20, is over government plans to sharply increase the number of doctors, which it says is essential to combat shortages and South Korea&#8217;s rapidly ageing population, while the medics argue it will erode service quality. Nearly 12,000 junior doctors \u2013 93 per cent of the trainee workforce \u2013 were<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}