If a professor at a university hospital sees a lot of patients and prescribes a lot of expensive tests, his or her salary will increase. For example, the more MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) tests are prescribed, the higher the salary level. As a result, the salary gap between professors within the same university hospital can more than double.
This is what Kim Hyun-ah, a professor at Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital (rheumatology department), said in an interview with Yonhap News. The interviews were conducted four times in the hospital office starting on August 26th.
Professor Kim said in an interview, "In Korea, not only local hospitals but also university hospitals are focused on making money. This stems from the abnormal system in which more than 90% of hospitals and clinics are run by private entities."
He said, “It is in the same context that university hospitals operate hotel-style health checkup centers and offer expensive checkup products worth around 20 million won,” and added, “In order to solve this problem, it is important to restore the public nature of medical care.”
Professor Kim said, “At a university hospital, a professor’s medical treatment is for the purpose of education and research” (interview 2nd article medical treatment – end of answer)
<Summary of the first interview article>
[Life] “You can fall into drug addiction even with medicine prescribed at the hospital, so be careful.”
There is no perfectly healthy body. As you live, you are bound to get sick. In particular, diseases caused by aging are difficult to cure. Even if you have some problems with your body, it is important to accept it and live with it. If you are too obsessed with your health, you will become stressed and harm your mental health.
There are patients who suffer from pain for no particular reason. Fibromyalgia is one such pain. This is because there is a problem with the central nervous system, and since the pain is not caused by inflammation or tissue damage, painkillers do not work well. If possible, pain should be reduced by reducing stress and exercising.
This does not mean that you should do special exercise at high intensity. The idea is to make exercise a part of your life. And you need to sleep well. It is better to avoid processed foods and cook at home and eat natural foods.
You should be careful about narcotic painkillers in hospitals. This is because you can become addicted by taking just one pill. There are many cases where young people addicted to drugs first encounter drugs at hospitals.
<Summary of the second interview article>
[Life] "A young man who chats with his friends on KakaoTalk without knowing that he will die the next day... It's so heartbreaking"
There are too many patients flocking to university hospitals. If many patients with mild symptoms come to tertiary care institutions, patients in critical condition cannot receive treatment in a timely manner. 80-90% of human diseases can be resolved at local hospitals.
In high-level general hospitals, there are quite a few cases where doctors see more than 100 patients a day. In this case, the treatment time per patient may be as little as 3 minutes. If treatment time is short, patients may not be able to properly explain their disease, and doctors may make hasty judgments.
For a doctor to provide proper treatment, I think the minimum required is about 30 minutes per patient for the first visit and 15 minutes for the repeat visit. This is because it takes this much time to fully listen to what the patient is saying.
University hospitals are places that educate students and conduct research. However, professors spend 60 to 70 percent of their time treating patients. I think this should be reduced to 30-40%. Patients and their guardians must also understand that university hospitals are educational institutions.
