The government will announce the final disposition plan for residents who have been away from hospitals for five months on the 8th (Korean time). According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters (CDSCHQ) will hold a meeting at the Seoul Government Complex that afternoon and announce the results through a briefing.
It has been about a month since Minister Cho personally appeared at the briefing, after announcing on the 4th of last month that he would withdraw various orders targeting residents and training hospitals. The government is expected to reveal its final disposition policy for residents who submitted their resignations between February 19th and 20th.
At a hearing of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee on the 26th of last month, Minister Cho said, “We will look at opinions from the field and the level of (residents’) return by the end of June and announce measures to respond to residents who have not returned in early July.”
On the 4th of last month, the government withdrew various orders issued to residents and affiliated training hospitals, such as the order to maintain treatment, the order to resume work, and the order to prohibit the acceptance of resignations, and decided to suspend the administrative disposition procedure for license suspension, thereby opening an ‘exit route’ for residents to return. However, as of the 4th, only 8.0% (1,104 people) of the total (13,756 people) of residents went to work at 211 training hospitals.
The number has only increased by 91 since the 3rd of last month (1,113 people), the day before the government announced the suspension of administrative disposition procedures for residents.
Accordingly, the government is planning to finalize the disposition plan for residents who have not returned on this day so that the training hospitals that are about to recruit residents in the second half of the year, with September 1 as the expected hiring date, can finally figure out the number of people they are short on and post recruitment notices.
The government is also considering easing restrictions on the return of resigned residents so that they can apply for the residency program in the second half of this year. According to the current ‘Resident Appointment Exam Guidelines,’ residents who resign during their training period cannot return to the same subject and the same year of service within one year, but the government is planning to ease the restrictions to encourage residents to return.
Some training hospital directors have requested the Ministry of Health and Welfare to revise the guidelines that restrict resigned residents from taking the same subject and year of service within one year of resignation so that they can return through the second half of September recruitment.