One doctor, one NICU, 100-hour workweeks: Korea's neonatal care crisis

"If a phone call comes in 24 hours a day, I run to the hospital," said Lee Byung-guk, a pediatrics professor at Sejong Chungnam National University Hospital. "I cannot sleep properly, so my greatest fear is making a bad judgment at a critical moment." Lee made the appeal on Sunday.

He has overseen the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, with a sense of mission since July 2020. The job consumes his daily life. Whenever emergency deliveries are scheduled or an extremely premature baby’s condition deteriorates, he must rush back to the hospital, remaining on call 24 hours a day.

Although the hospital employs contract physicians on duty, caring for high-risk newborns remains solely the responsibility of Lee, who is a specialist. "Even though there are contract physicians on duty, if a baby is born before 32 weeks of pregnancy, I have no choice but to return to the hospital," Lee said. He added that he once received an emergency call during a medical school lecture and had to be speeding back to the facility.

Driven by a growing sense of crisis in the medical field, the Korean