Sardinia has to deal with a serious shortage of doctors and this is the starting point of a bipartisan proposal by the senators of the island to increase the enrollment of Sardinian students in the Faculties of Medicine and Surgery of Sardinia.
The details were exposed today in the classroom by Senator Carlo Doria (Lega), who spoke in his dual capacity as a health worker and university professor stigmatizing “the critical issues that emerged in this pandemic and to suggest corrective measures”.
Doria, from Sassari, highlighted the “inability of public health” to deal with the coronavirus emergency “aggravated by the shortage of medical and health personnel, the result of” short-sighted choices “, as well as well-known infrastructural insufficiencies.
THE NUMBERS – “In the next five years – said the senator – over 50 thousand doctors from the national health service will be missing, taking into account the fact that Italian doctors are among the oldest in Europe, and thousands are vacant”. The problem is equally serious “for nurses, physiotherapists and other figures in the healthcare world”
These issues – the Northern League exponent underlined – “require a precise strategy to restore the workforce”, and one of the first measures should be “the abolition of the limited number for enrollment in the master’s degree course in Medicine and Surgery, now anti-historical and abandoned in various European realities “.
THE SARDINIA CASE – In detail: “For Sardinia, my land, the trend is even more negative due to the desertification of territorial medicine, the lack of general practitioners and pediatricians of free choice as well as the closure of numerous hospital wards due to a shortage of doctors specialists “.
In the Faculties of Cagliari and Sassari, “there is a growing number of young people who graduate in Medicine and Surgery and come from other regions. Having obtained their degree, they cross the Tyrrhenian Sea to carry out their profession in the regions of origin”. Considering, explained Doria, “that 10 per cent of Sardinian students pass the national test, it is evident that the limited number does not allow the training of a sufficient number of Sardinian doctors to cover the needs of the regional health system”.
Hence the need to “implement an extraordinary provision to derogate from the norm by requiring at least for the next two academic years to enroll an adequate number of students between the two Sardinian universities compared to the places assigned annually by the ministry. These places must be reserved for born in Sardinia or resident for at least 5 years prior to the application, and admission must include a selective test with a preferential title for those who have already taken the admission exam before “.
The proposal, concluded Doria, “was shared by the rectors of the two Sardinian universities and by the regional council, which will play an active role by providing the necessary resources to cover additional teaching roles, considering it a necessary investment”.
This would be a change with a “limited in time and exceptional” character, with a view to definitively abolishing the limited number in the Faculty of Medicine.
The senator asked that the subject be placed on an agenda for upcoming sessions.
(Unioneonline/s.s.)
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