Patient Complains: ‘Four Toes Amputated Due to Doctor’s Strike’

As the medical community and the government continue their standoff over the expansion of medical schools, collective actions by specialists are intensifying, leading to confusion on the ground as surgeries are postponed or canceled.

According to the medical community, on the 19th, specialists at the largest hospitals in South Korea (Seoul National University, Seoul Asan, Samsung Seoul, Seoul St. Mary’s) submitted their resignation letters. They announced they would stop working from 6 a.m. on the 20th.

In fact, according to a representative from Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital, the specialists in the internal medicine department (about 30 people) submitted their resignation letters on the evening of the 19th, and the schedule has been adjusted with professors and full-time doctors (clinical instructors) on duty from the 20th.

On the same day, about 600 specialists in departments such as pediatrics at Severance Hospital also submitted their resignation letters. It is known that all specialists in essential medical departments such as oncology and orthopedic surgery have resigned.

As a result, the confusion grows as surgery schedules are canceled or postponed. In particular, it is leading to actual harm to patients.

One netizen said, “My aunt has skin cancer on her foot and needs to have her toes amputated. We’ve been waiting for four months believing she would have surgery on the 20th,” and “But on the night of the 16th, they called to cancel the surgery, and now they say they have to amputate four toes instead of the originally planned two.”

He vented, “How can they be so irresponsible? There’s nowhere else to go, and I’m worried that if the delay continues, the amputation area will be extended.”

Lee Geon Joo, the president of the Korean Lung Cancer Patient Association, who is in the terminal stages of lung cancer, also called on the government and the Korean Medical Association to negotiate, saying, “We must not abandon the medical field.”

Lee said, “Patients are already waiting for improvements in treatment conditions and doctors’ consideration.” He appealed, “As a group with the highest intellect and honor, show tolerance for a lacking society.”

He also told the government, “Unprepared expansion can only lower the quality of doctors” and “The government should not try to solve this with laws and the logic of the strong.”

The government is issuing a medical service maintenance order and demanding the medical community withdraw their collective resignation and strike.

During a regular briefing on the same day, Park Min Soo, the Vice Minister of Health and Welfare, said, “We have issued a medical service maintenance order for specialists of all 221 training hospitals nationwide, and we plan to conduct field inspections today.”

Prime Minister Han Duck Soo also said at a “Ministerial Meeting on Responding to Collective Action by Doctors” held at the Government Seoul Office, “If collective action intensifies, we will operate the emergency medical system of public medical institutions and fully allow non-face-to-face treatment.”