Did a terminal cancer patient die in the emergency room at Severance Hospital in Seoul on February 19, 2024, due to the current resident doctors' walkout, a protest against the government's plan to boost medical school admissions? No, that's not true: The hospital denied the claim, saying no such thing happened.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) by @secret_tutoring (archived here) on TikTok on February 22, 2024. It stated (translated from Korean to English by Lead Stories staff):
Anonymous patient A, a terminal cancer patient taken to the emergency room of Severance Hospital, died in the ER while waiting for cooperative terminal care.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sat Feb 24 17:55:36 2024 UTC)
The claim originated from a news report from News1 published on February 22, 2024 (archived here). According to the report, a cancer patient passed away in the Severance Hospital's emergency room; the patient was waiting to receive treatment from other departments of the hospital, but this was allegedly delayed due to the resident doctors' walkout. The patient died while waiting for end-of-life care, News1 stated. In the report's headline, News1 implied the patient's death was related to the resident doctors' walkout.
However, the hospital firmly denied (archived here) a relationship between the walkout and the patient's death in a press release issued on February 22, 2024 (as translated):
At that time, specialty doctors were in the Emergency Room; normal and typical medical procedures were carried out until the patient passed away.
Moreover, multiple local media outlets (archived here, here and here) said the Ministry of Health is investigating the incident and no direct link to the walkout has emerged so far.
As the government decided (archived here) to expand medical schools' quota to provide more doctors for the medical system, more than 10,000 South Korean resident doctors resigned (archived here) to protest against the government policy.
