The objectives of this study are (1) to examine the training and working conditions of residents after revision of the 'Regulations on Specialist Training and Accreditation,ʼ (2) to determine the causes of problems with these training and working conditions, and (3) to seek improvement in these conditions. A questionnaire survey was conducted over two weeks. A total of 10,768 respondents and 1,793 valid responses were analyzed. Although revised regulations had been implemented, training conditions did not appear to have undergone any improvements. 52.9% of residents work over 80 hours per week and 27.1% respondents exceeded 100 hours per week. 76.9% of respondents indicated that they exceed the maximum continuous training time of 36 hours. 64.5% of respondents said their emergency room training time was over 12 hours. 25.4% of respondents' duty days exceeded three days a week. 34.7% of respondents said that they had less than three days off per month. The proportion of those with annual leave under 14 days is 70.2%. For substantive improvements in training and working conditions, new plans must consider practical factors in the implementation of improvements. This requires a governance structure based on participation, and an independent, objective training evaluation organization should be established to perform a reliable assessment. Above all, the government financial compensation plan must prepare for improving the training environment.
The quality of medical services and the health of patients can be guaranteed when the doctors are healthy. In this study, we used the data from the 2016 Korean Physician Survey and analyzed the relationship of lifestyle, stress, and chronic diseases status with the self-rated health of Korean doctors. Among 7,631 doctors in Korea, 2,336 (30.6%) reported their self-rated health as ‘good’, 4,462 (58.5%) as ‘moderate’, and 833 (10.9%) as ‘bad’. The multinominal logistic regression analysis, showed that factors related to the self-rated health were age, type of healthcare facility, smoking, exercise, sleep duration, stress, and chronic diseases status. Since doctors’ lifestyle, stress, and chronic disease status were closely related to their self-rated health, it is imperative to prepare measures to protect doctors’ health in an intensive medical environment, where too many patients require treatment, due to the characteristics of the medical system in Korea.
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