BACKGROUND: The expansion and strengthening of primary care is approved as the only method to revise the ineffective health care system in Korea. In such a system, we intended to analyze the functional and regianal distribution of specialists by investigating and classifying the hospitals where residents who completed their training in a university hospital located in Seoul for seven years are working and by acquiring the distribution of the subjects who are practicing as primary care physicians by year, specialties and location. METHODS: We selected 384 specialists, all of whom were trained as residents at a university hospital located in Seoul from 1987 to 1993. The hospitals they worked at were classified as primary, secondary and tertiary care hospitals according to the classification in the health care administration. The location of primary care hcspitals among them was plotted an two maps; one of Seoul, the other of Korea. RESULTS: The number of females in the subjects was 68(17.7%) and that of males 316(82.3%). The number of practitianers was 156(40.6%) and that of specialists working at the secondary care hospitals was 55(14.3%), and 147 specialists were working at the tertiary care hospitals(38.3%). With regard to the pereentage of practitioners, dermatologic specialists presented with 60%, and relatively high group included obstetrics and gynecology(59.2%), family medicine(54.5%), plastic surgery(52.6%), otolaryngology (52.0%), pediatrics(51.7%), and orthopedics(48.6%).In tertiary care hospital, chest surgery showed 72.7% as highest. Radiologic ancology presented with 66.7% and anatamical pathology with 66.7%. As to the location of primary care hospitals, 41.0% were in Seoul and 38.5% in Kyungkido. And the rest of the 20. 5% were located in other areas of Korea. CONCLUSIONS: Considering the results of the study that show a great number of specialists are actually practicing as primary care physicians after their specialists training, the present training system of specialists needs to be revised and cantrolled in structure.
Classification ; Delivery of Health Care ; Female ; Gyeonggi-do ; Humans ; Korea ; Male ; Obstetrics ; Otolaryngology ; Pathology ; Physicians, Primary Care ; Primary Health Care ; Secondary Care ; Seoul ; Specialization ; Tertiary Healthcare ; Thorax