A Saudi doctor in Korea conducted 16 scientific research and 150 international surgeries, in addition to obtaining a certificate of consultant general surgery, robotic colorectal tumor surgery, endoscopy, and pelvic disorders from the State of Korea.
And like any doctor who went to study, he had to make an effort to crown his studies with a certificate with which to return home with his head held high.
But the shock came after he learned that 17 years he spent studying medicine in Korea did not help him in finding a vacancy for him in his homeland after he returned.
Dr. Sami Al-Asari, returning to his homeland as the first Saudi scholarship student to obtain a fellowship from Korea, found himself unemployed after he was rejected by 22 hospitals in the Kingdom, either because there was no vacancy or a budget was not available to secure the necessary equipment, while other hospitals refused to recognize his testimony, which they recognized The Ministry of Higher Education, the Ministry of Health and the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties.
Al-Assari began his studies in his specialty in 2011 and graduated in February 2014, after which he worked at King Faisal Specialist Hospital - Research Center - for five years, during which he presented four research papers in colorectal surgery, two of which were published in a scientific journal, one of which was on "a treatment relationship Radiation rectal cancer with blood analysis”, and the other on “treatment of radiation cancer of the rectum in women at an early age”, after which he obtained the Saudi fellowship in general surgery, the Saudi Board and the Arab Board, and then the Ministry of Higher Education sent him to Korea to specialize in robotic colorectal surgery, to become The first Saudi to obtain a fellowship from Korea and work in Seoul Severance Hospital in Korea, where he stayed in Korea for three years, during which he worked as a colon and rectal surgeon, whether through full opening of the abdomen, endoscopy, robot or single opening surgery.
Al-Asari said: "As you know, the technique of treating fecal incontinence is a specialty that does not exist in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East as a whole, noting that robotic surgery has become a global surgery that is present in most regions of the world, and in America and Korea 80% of the operations that are performed are either robotic or endoscopic. In Saudi Arabia, there are about eight devices, each of which costs approximately ten million riyals.”
Al-Asari continued, "After completing the three years, I returned to Saudi Arabia in the month of Ramadan before last, and there was an offer for two jobs for colorectal surgery at Dammam Specialized Hospital. From my studies, I was surprised by his resignation a month before my return to Saudi Arabia, and then the administrative procedures were complicated in order for me to get a job in this hospital and other hospitals in the region.”
The Saudi doctor points out that officials at King Fahd Medical City Hospital refused to recognize the fellowship from Korea, although the Ministry of Health and the Saudi Commission recognize it. Currently, 100 doctors are being sent from Saudi Arabia to Korea, and the field is still open for scholarships, according to what was published in the "Al-Iqtisadiah" newspaper.
Al-Assari pointed out that the work in the Ministry of Health is either through (self-employment) self-presentation or through the civil service. He was left with only self-employment and there are no jobs available to him now, as he provided through self-employment in hospitals such as King Fahd Medical City in Riyadh, which has a robot without a surgeon that performs colorectal robot surgery and offered them to work for two months to operate the device and train doctors on it for a certain period However, they refused this without justification, he said. As for universities that have specialized hospitals, their justifications varied, including that robotics is not a priority, or because there is no vacancy or allocated budgets.
