MEDICAL ENGLISH ARTICLES

  Medical students shun surgery departments due to heavy workload, insufficient compensation By Lee Hyo-jin In television shows and movies, surgeons are often portrayed as heroes, not only for their medical knowledge and surgery skills, which save lives, but also for their sacrifice and commitment putting patients first. But the reality is different. In Korea, the surgery department has long been one of the least popular specialties among medical students due to poor working conditions and significantly lower salaries, compared to the heavy workload. Students who have graduated from medical schools here go through a one-year internship in a hospital after which they choose a department to go through three to four years training as a resident. But surgery-related departments have been failing to fill their slots for residencies for the past few years. In 2021, only 141 trainees applied to the general surgery departments at 55 hospitals across the country, leaving over 30 slots empty...

Park, a high school student living in a small town in a rural area, tried to go to an emergency room due to his high fever of 41 degrees Celsius. But the hospital refused to let him in, instead suspecting that he had COVID-19, and instructed him to go to a bigger hospital. His parents then had to drive more than three hours to the emergency center of a university hospital in Seoul. He was admitted after being tested negative for the coronavirus disease, but he died thereafter of aggravated pneumonia. Amid the pandemic, the lives of some patients of illnesses other than the COVID-19 are being exposed to greater risks ― or even lost ― as hospitals fail to provide them with the proper timely treatment. In many other cases, the patients themselves are reluctant to go to hospitals. According to research submitted to the Journal of Korean Medical Science by Prof. Kang Soo at Inha University Hospital in Incheon, the number of patients who went to the emergency room dropped significantly durin...