2023-12-21 03:07:00
【Health and Welfare News】 The Korean Medical Association and the Oriental Medicine Association expressed their conditional approval of the unification of medical services. However, in each debate, there was a strong conflict between the Oriental Medicine Association’s opinion that existing licensees (oriental medicine doctors) should be guaranteed opportunities to train and obtain licenses, and the Oriental Medical Association’s opinion that this cannot be done.
On the 21st, Rep. Shin Hyun-young of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee and the Democratic Party’s Special Committee on Health and Medical Services held a discussion session on ‘Unification of medical school and oriental medical school, simultaneous with expansion of medical school quota’ held at the National Assembly Hall.
Hwang Man-ki, vice president of the Oriental Medical Association, and Lee Jeong-geun, full-time vice president of the Korean Medical Association, who attended the debate on this day, expressed their conditional approval of the overall agenda of unifying medical care, but were unable to narrow their opinions on specific issues such as the issue of existing licensees.
First of all, the Korean Medicine Association expressed its support for unification of medical services. However, Vice Chairman Hwang put a condition on this, saying, “Transitional measures for existing licensees must be specified in detail,” and “specific training opportunities must be guaranteed and the opportunity to take the (integrative medicine) licensing exam must be guaranteed.”
Lee Jeong-geun, full-time vice president of the Korean Medical Association, who attended on behalf of the Korean Medical Association, also expressed his conditional support for unification of medical services. In particular, the main focus is to unify medical education by abolishing the oriental medical school and oriental medical doctor system and to maintain existing qualifications and work areas for licensed medical practitioners. Vice Chairman Lee said, “We need to abolish the oriental medicine system and provide integrated medical education centered on medicine,” adding, “There have been several attempts to unify medical care, but they have failed each time due to issues with medical licensees. He argued, “Existing oriental medicine doctors should be separated from the unification of medical care and proceed in a way that oriental medicine departments will naturally disappear as retirement approaches.”
For reference, in 2018, a medical, Korean, and government consultative body was formed and even a mediation plan for medical unification agreement was drawn up. A significant amount of agreement was reached on medical unification, but at the end of the discussion, differences of opinion on existing licensees might not be resolved and the agreement was canceled.
On this day, the issue of existing licensees was also a hot topic. The Korean Medical Association clarified that the medical unification system should apply to newly-produced students and not to those who graduated from existing oriental medical schools.
Lee Seong-woo, a professor of emergency medicine at Korea University Anam Hospital, also said, “We need to exclude those with medical licenses and discuss this.”
▶Discussion of transfer method of “the College of Oriental Medicine quota to the College of Medicine”
The Association of Oriental Medicine also proposed a plan to transfer the quota of the College of Oriental Medicine to the quota of the medical school. It is an effective policy alternative to ▲prevent excessive expansion of specific vocational colleges in a situation where the school-age population is decreasing, ▲prevent excessive influx of excellent human resources in science and engineering into medical schools, and ▲improve the efficiency of medical use.
As a detailed plan, a plan was proposed in which universities that have both a medical school and a college of Oriental medicine might reduce some of the number of students in the College of Oriental Medicine and transfer it to a medical school, and convert colleges of Oriental Medicine in areas where there is a shortage of local public healthcare and emergency medical services into medical schools.
On this day, a consensus was formed that a complete conversion method should be adopted regarding the conversion of the College of Oriental Medicine into a medical school, that is, the unification of medical services. Under the assumption that medical unification will be implemented, medical figures such as Lee Jeong-geun, vice president of the Korea Medical Association, argued for the need to completely convert the College of Oriental Medicine into a medical school. This is because it is more appropriate to convert 12 oriental medicine colleges into medical schools across the board rather than gradually converting oriental medicine colleges into medical schools. Myeong-Soo Jeong, vice dean of Wonkwang University of Oriental Medicine, also said that comprehensive integration must be assumed.
However, the Korean Medical Association assumed that the transfer of the capacity of the Oriental Medicine College to the medical school would be discussed following the unification of medical services was implemented.
Park Jun-hyung, Secretary of the Health and Medical Policy Division of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, “The costs and conflicts arising from the dual system must be resolved. “The Ministry of Health and Welfare is considering unifying medical care as one of the ways to provide better medical services to the people,” he said.
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