Critical Care Doctors Staying at Posts for Now, But Warn "May Leave If Limits Are Exceeded"

While specialists in critical care and emergency medicine at university hospitals are remaining at their posts out of a sense of duty, a study showed that they are contemplating leaving as burnout deepens due to staff shortages and heavy workloads.

The Research Institute for Healthcare Policy under the Korean Medical Association published a report titled "An Exploration of Internal Motivations of Voluntarily Remaining Critical-Emergency Medical Specialists Amid Structural Adversity."

The research team conducted in-depth interviews with 16 specialists working in critical care and emergency medicine at three university hospitals in Seoul.

The participants specialized in fields such as trauma surgery, thoracic surgery, obstetrics, pediatric nephrology, pediatric cardiology, emergency medicine, pediatric emergency medicine, and hemato-oncology, with an average of 17 years of experience as specialists.

They unanimously voiced difficulties surrounding their practice environments, including chronic staff shortages, heavy workloads, relatively low compensation, and judicial risks.

Representative comments included, "We need at least 10 people, but only 4 are doing the work, so I worry someone might die from overwork first," "We have to stay by the patient's side for at least several hours, or up to several days, and trying to do it alone makes me wonder if I can keep going, thinking the patient could die if something goes wrong," and "University hospital doctors are burdened with too many obligations relative to their salaries, which is why no one is doing it."

Concerns were also consistently raised regarding judicial risks, such as hitting a limit because the medical reimbursement fees for critical care are too low, or facing lawsuits and disputes from patients' families over unfavorable outcomes despite doing their best.

Nevertheless, the interview participants stated that they are staying at their posts due to pride as "doctors who do not miss patients' critical moments," a sense of competence in their skills, fulfillment in results, rewards from seeing critical patients recover, and the value of critical and emergency care.

At the same time, however, they voiced that they are simultaneously contemplating the possibility of leaving whenever the burden exceeds manageable levels.

The report defined this as "conditional retention," stating, "While critical-emergency specialists are voluntarily staying through internal motivation amid adversity, this should be interpreted as a warning sign that individuals are temporarily filling structural problems with internal motivation."

It further pointed out, "The current critical and emergency medical system uses individuals' sense of duty or desire for growth as a substitute for policy," adding, "While doctors' internal motivation is the force sustaining the field, it possesses the vulnerability of turning into a simultaneous collapse once that force is depleted, making it highly unstable in the long run."

The report concluded, "The direction of critical and emergency medical personnel policies must not stop at 'securing medical staff with a sense of duty,' but rather create sustainable working environments and protective systems."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.