Raed Arafat, Head of the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), believes that residency is an outdated form that ignores the needs of the system. In his view, residency should consist of a kind of interview, with resident assessments after 6 months, then one year, the same as in countries such as Germany, Hungary and others.
„The exam for residency is an outdated matter. Time is over for it and we must begin to think of solutions especially where we lack personnel. We are the only country where one will become doctor is 6 years if she does not pass this residency exam – maybe you have a headache in the morning, maybe you are not feeling well – if she does not pass the exam, we will take her to the streets.
This person has a medical degree, attention!
Another country takes them all, pays language courses and accept them for residency without a contest.
A country that knows how to plan the future and knows very well what to do takes the young doctors whom we leave in the street and brings them in hospitals to help surgeons, anaesthetists etc., and we do not want them in hospitals.
We successfully make in 2010 a set of regulations for doctors under supervision whom no one wanted to consider to work with them. This way we lose dozens, not to say hundreds, of doctors every year and others take them”, said Raed Arafat on Saturday at the National Conference of Pharma-economic and Health Management (CNFMS) in Targu Mures, quoted by Agerpres.
The responsibility for the lack of doctors belongs to those in charge of the personnel policies in Romania who are unable to find and predict the need for greater system flexibility.
Arafat also said that residency should be some sort of interview with resident assessments at 6 months, then one year, as in countries such as Germany, Hungary etc. and it is not possible that a centre for emergency medicine like Targu Mures to receive only 1-2 residents per year, given the training capacity they have.
Italy, a country where the personal problem is just at the beginning and attract Romanian doctors
Italy will soon have great need of doctors because of the massive retirements in the system and if the country has attracted mostly medical assistants from Romania so far, now it will attract doctors, warns Raed Arafat.
„Italy did not need doctors, but a large number of physicians begin now to retire. They needed medical assistants, now need doctors and recruit doctors from abroad. In Romania it is very easy for doctors, with the language as well as to take their luggage to leave, as did the medical assistants. Only in UPU Targu Mures we changed the team of medical assistants once and a half, because they left to Italy. They were people whom we have trained. We lost 100% of the medical assistants within 3-4 months and afterwards we lost 50% of those hired after training,” said the DSU’s head.
