Good news for young MDs: 2-million yen a year to be paid per intern

In a move to improve the livelihoods and working conditions of young medical doctors working in hospitals as interns, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare decided to increase educational subsidies to hospitals.

The ministry's budget request for FY 2004 budget (starting in April 2004) includes 21.2 billion yen (about 180 million dollars) for such subsidies, five times more than the funds for the current fiscal year.

The decision, providing two million yen (about 17,000 dollars) a year per intern includes clinical training which will be compulsory from next April for newly licensed doctors.

The Japanese Communist Party together with medical students has tenaciously called for improvement of the financially disadvantageous conditions of trainee doctors.

In Japan, anyone who graduates from medical school and passes the medical licensing exam normally takes clinical training at a hospital with a monthly allowance of only about 200,000 yen (about 1,700 dollars) for government-run or municipal university hospitals and less than 100,000 yen (about 850 dollars) for most private university hospitals. Many interns have been obliged to work graveyard shifts at private hospitals, but it has been pointed out that this has been a source of medical accidents and doctors' death from overwork. (end)