South Korea doctors warn Covid-19 surge and strike could cripple emergency rooms

SEOUL - South Korea’s medical association warned on Aug 23 that a spike in Covid-19 cases and an ongoing strike by trainee doctors could cripple hospital emergency rooms (ERs) in September, at a time when many doctors will also be off due to a public holiday.

The government has, however, disputed the risk of emergency room closures cited by the Korea Medical Association (KMA), and said it was providing additional support where needed.

Thousands of trainee doctors, including interns and resident doctors,

walked off the job in February

to protest against a plan to lift medical student numbers by 2,000 a year to meet what the authorities project will be a severe shortage of doctors.

Hospitals that had relied on trainee doctors across multiple medical disciplines have had to

turn away patients at emergency rooms

, citing a shortage of staff, while existing doctors have experienced heavier workloads, the government said.

The KMA, which represents practising doctors, said that more emergency room physicians at university hospitals have been resigning due to overwork and fear of facing malpractice lawsuits exacerbated by fatigue.

“In September, as the wave of Covid-19 cases peaks, there will be a surge of patients, and there is also the Chuseok holiday, when doctors in essential disciplines will be taking time off, so emergency rooms are likely to go into a serial shutdown,” KMA spokesman Chae Dong-young told a briefing.

Chuseok is the country's annual holiday celebrated over three days in the autumn.

The Health Ministry said there may be some emergency rooms that have needed support from military or community doctors assigned by the authorities, but denied that the emergency rooms were headed for closure.

South Korea saw

a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in August

, but the Health Ministry has said that more than 95 per cent of patients who have visited emergency rooms are cases that could be treated at clinics.

As part of a medical reform plan, the government has proposed giving incentives to doctors to practise in essential disciplines and in regions outside Seoul and other large cities.

It has also proposed increasing the cost of using emergency room services to patients for non-acute emergency conditions in a bid to ease the load in this area.
REUTERS