South Korean Govt to deploy over 2700 nurses amid protest from Junior doctors

Seoul: Amid the ongoing strike by Junior doctors in South Korea, the Health Ministry on Friday announced its decision to deploy over 2,700 additional physician assistant (PA) nurses to hospitals to mitigate disruptions in the medical system.

According to the Ministry, till March-end, 8,982 PAs were working at 375 general hospitals nationwide, and the government now plans to add 2,715 such nurses to raise the total number to around 12,000, Yonhap news agency reported.

Since February 20, more than 90 per cent of South Korea's 13,000 trainee doctors have been on strike, protesting against the government's plan to augment the number of medical school seats by 2,000, starting next year, from the current 3,058 seats.

Often called clinical nurse specialists or operating room nurses, PAs are supposed to take over part of the duties of junior doctors in medical institutions, such as conducting tests and performing partial surgeries.

The government has said it is open to talks. President Yoon Suk Yeol also met with the chief of a striking trainee doctors' group earlier this month. However, no immediate breakthrough has been reported.

The government has been emphasizing the necessity of increasing admission quotas to tackle the shortage of doctors, particularly in rural regions and critical medical fields like high-risk surgeries, paediatrics, obstetrics, and emergency medicine.

With South Korea's ageing population and other demographic challenges, the country is projected to face a shortage of 15,000 doctors by 2035.

However, doctors argue that the medical school enrollment quota hike would compromise the quality of medical education and services and create a surplus of physicians, adding that the government must devise ways of better protecting them from malpractice suits and extending compensation to induce more physicians to practise in such "unpopular" areas.