보건복지부 장관 조규홍, 정신적 외상 전문 교육 센터 지원 약속

[홀랜]

Health and Welfare Minister Cho Kyoo-hong speaks during a meeting held at Government Complex Seoul on Friday. (Yonhap)

South Korea’s Health and Welfare Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said Friday that the government will secure 868 million won to support trauma care specialist training centers and expand the target number of centers from five to 17.

In a state-run meeting addressing doctors' ongoing collective action, Minster Cho stated that there should be “no suspension of operations at trauma specialist training centers due to budget shortages.”

Last month, Korea University Guro Hospital announced its plans to cease operations of its trauma specialist training center at the end of February due to discontinued government funding. Guro Hospital has been the only designated trauma specialist training center for medics in the country since 2014.

Over the past 11 years, with the ministry’s aim to establish trauma-focused training hospitals in resource-rich areas to bolster expertise, Guro Hospital has trained over 20 trauma specialists to become first responders for critically injured patients.

Trauma specialists refer to doctors who, after obtaining board certification in one of four categories — general surgery, thoracic surgery, orthopedic surgery or neurosurgery — undergo an additional two years of training at trauma centers to acquire additional specialist qualifications.

Minister Cho vowed that the government would make “every effort to ensure the uninterrupted operation of the trauma specialist training program.” He added that the government would also expand the number of doctors eligible for training at trauma centers from the current four to six, by adding emergency medicine and anesthesiology.

In line with the government’s latest decision to revert its medical school quota hike plan and maintain the number for 2026 to 3,058 students — the level equivalent to the figure before the government pushed a plan to increase admissions by 2,000 — Minister Cho urged medical students to return to school.

“We ask all medical students to return to their campuses. We also urge parents and senior medical professionals to encourage their return.”

On March 7, the Education Ministry’s Deputy Prime Minister Lee Ju-ho announced that the government would restore next year’s admissions to pre-expansion levels only if the medical school students on leave returned to school by the end of March.

If students do not respond, the admissions quota will stay at 5,058 students, the ministry said.

Such remarks came about a year after the government decided to expand domestic medical school admissions, which led to ongoing disputes across medical sectors, contributing to doctor shortages in emergency rooms.

ddd@heraldcorp.com