[Editorial] Stop-gap measure

The Ministry of Education has unveiled an emergency plan to “normalize” medical school operations to deal with the inevitable gap in education for medical students who have refused to attend classes in protest against the government’s medical reform initiatives, including the increase in medical school enrollment quotas.

The ministry said Sunday it will temporarily allow medical students to take a leave of absence on condition that they return to school for the spring semester next year. This is a stop-gap measure to prevent extended disruptions of medical school education caused by the mass walkout.

While the temporary policy was deemed unavoidable, the ministry sparked a fresh round of disputes by announcing Sunday that it would also consider reducing the medical school curriculum from the current six years to five to address the shortage of new medical professionals.

The proposal to shorten the curriculum prompted the medical community to express strong opposition, saying that the measure would undermine the quality of medical education.

It is regrettable that the government has created another hot-button issue at a time when it needs to resolve the protracted confrontation with the medical community over the enrollment quota and related medical reform policy initiatives.

South Korea’s medical care services have been hit by delays and cancellations of surgeries since February when junior doctors left hospitals over the government’s plan to boost the number of medical school students to prepare for a shortage of medical professionals in Korea's rapidly aging society.

The problems plaguing medical care services are serious enough, especially for doctors saddled with heavier workloads as a result of the walkout by junior doctors and for patients waiting longer to get surgeries and treatment.

But reducing the medical education curriculum from six years to five is another matter. Across the world, students are required to spend at least six years -- or up to eight years -- at medical schools to learn the basics and acquire essential skills to become medical professionals.

Some experts say that even the six-year education curriculum for doctors is not long enough in consideration of the massive amount of medical knowledge and skills students have to learn.

Particularly problematic is that shortening the curriculum period could result in a lower quality of medical school education -- a possibility that would overlap with the core argument of the medical community in protesting the government’s enrollment quotas.

Doctors and medical students have opposed the government’s plan to increase medical school quotas, claiming that accepting more students would hurt the quality of education in view of the current medical school infrastructure and the limited number of professors.

As the dispute expanded, the Education Ministry said in a briefing Monday that universities run an early graduation program for students who have completed the required credits, which can reduce the study period by up to a year. The ministry said that its plan is not to force all universities to adopt the five-year program but to support schools that choose to adopt such a model.

In a parliamentary audit on Monday, Health and Welfare Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said there was no prior discussion with the Education Ministry over the shortening of the medical school curriculum, but he does not oppose the plan as long as the quality of education is guaranteed.

While the government itself has added more confusion to the dispute over its medical reform initiatives, the country’s medical schools continue to struggle with the mass absence of students. For all the pleas and policy incentives, a mere 3.4 percent of medical school students have registered for the fall semester, and only 2.8 percent of students returned to classes.

Given that a shorter curriculum is unlikely to ensure the quality of education, the government and the medical community must jointly seek other ways to resolve the ongoing medical service and education debacles.