MEDICAL DIPLOMA=CAREER PASSPORT ABORAD

It’s a known fact. For years now, Romanian doctors look for financial and professional recognition abroad. They run away from a healthcare system that condemns them to take bribes from patients.

Almost 30, N.K. already made himself a plan for his future as a dentist. It does not include Romania. Even though, being Macedonian, he admits he came to study in Romania because he had some advantages this way regarding school taxes, accommodation and public transport.

Now he is getting ready to leave. “The main reason is the financial one. Romania can’t offer in the next five years a satisfying economical comfort. That’s why I started to consider working in countries such as Denmark or Norway where salaries exceed 5000Euros/month.”

He is just one of the thousands of young doctors that wish to leave Romania, a phenomenon that in the last years took epic proportions. The numbers show that between 2007 and 2010, over 6,500 doctors choose to leave and practice medicine in other EU countries, and approx. 60% of resident doctors have required their conformity certificate, needed to practice medicine abroad.

The Health Ministries data underlines that from 2007 up to now there were 20.000 certificates released, including for dentists and pharmacists. “The doctors wanted this certificate. We don’t know where they leave and how many actually leave.” Explain the officials from the Health Ministry.

“Most likely we will continue loosing doctors, just as we lost IT personnel.  We have a lot of very professional doctors that wish to work in state of the art facilities worldwide”, says Sergiu Negut, the executive director of private medical services Queen Maria. According to him, we should maintain the number of medics and the number of funds allocated for them at a satisfying level. “For 45.000 active doctors, 1000 Euro per year in plus for each one of them does not mean more than 1% of the allocated budget for health”.

The offers for doctors abroad have risen with almost 40%

The data published by recruiting agencies show that in the medical and pharmaceutical field, the number of offers to work abroad have risen with almost 40% from the beginning of the year to the preset, in comparison to 2010. “There still is a high demand for Romanian specialist doctors in the medical field, in countries such as Germany, Great Britain and France.”

Viorel Rotila, the president of the Federation “Solidaritatea Sanitara”, underlines that from 2003 till now 14% of the total Romanian doctors chose to leave for salaries of thousands of Euros. “Most of them are the young doctors that don’t figure as emigrants because they leave as residents and once they finish their residency abroad they choose to stay there”. He reminds of a recent study regarding the professional quality of life in the current Romanian health system, which reveals that the deficit of personnel affects the work program. 22% of medical employees work overtime. This phenomenon took amplitude right after Romania joined the EU.

What is to be done in the first phase? First of all, the vacant positions in the public system should be opened up, especially because in the present more and more doctors migrate from the public system to the private one. “What will happen? Well, because nobody is coming back from the occident, Romania is going to have to import doctors from the third world”, underlines Gheorghe Cerin, the chief of Cardiology from San Gaudenzio Hospital in Novara Italy.

In fact he is one of the most important examples of a doctor that leaved well before 2007. Now, Cerin has 58 years, and still remembers the period 1992-1994, when he had a scholarship at San Donato Hospital from Milano, in cardiac surgery. “I used to go there in quality of a specialist medic in cardiology and as a university assistant from the University Hospital from Bucharest”, he remembers. Fate made him stay there – “In 1992, from his salary as a specialist in cardiology and university assistant, I couldn’t even afford to buy a train ticket for a second class route Bucharest-Milano”, he said. After 20 years, Gheorghe Cerin works in a world known center, reference for cardiac surgery.

The salary for a resident doctor in Romania is 250 Euro 

Although Romania has an excellent system for forming doctors and medical personnel, the problem continues to be the payment system. “A young specialist doctor has to study for another 10 years after finishing high school. That means that he has around 30 years and in general also a family. How can he manage with 400 Euros per month?” Asks himself Gheorghe Cerin. Or even less: a resident doctor in Romania earns about 250 Euros. In comparison a specialist doctor in cardiology in Italy, in the first year after finishing his residency earns about 45.000-50.000 euros per year. After tax he is left with about 20.000-23.000 Euros per year. That means about 2000 euro per month, a huge difference in comparison to Romania.

In context, most of medical specialties are sought after abroad, with minor exceptions: “For plastic surgery, there are not so many positions. You can’t say the same about general medicine”, explains Viorel Rotila. From this point of view, Romania is far under Poland, who overcame its short comings regarding the payment for the healthcare workers.

For now there is still hope: “we produce as much as we export”, says Mihai Marcu, the president of the Administration Coucil MedLife, leader in the segment of private medical practice, that underlines that, at least for the next years to come, it will still be ok.

Some Numbers:

63% of workers in the healthcare sector have wages under 1.500 RON, 71.6% have wages between 1.000 and 1.500 RON. The graph demonstrates how satisfied are these, in comparison with their work efforts.

Source of the article here: http://www.capital.ro/detalii-articole/stiri/diploma-de-medic-a-devenit-pasaport-pentru-strainatate-155818.html