Romania has three times more resident doctors than the system allows. The Minister of Health wants reform: “Tuition figures are out of control”

The residency system in Romania needs a major structural reform, as the number of residents is approximately three times higher than the absorption capacity of the medical system, said the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete, on Sunday evening.

“The idea is to have a predictable system,” said Rogobete. PHOTO: Facebook

“It is certain that an important structural reform is needed, I say, because we produce, with strict quotation marks, three times more residents than we can include in the system, because the schooling figures have gotten out of control in the last five years.” said Alexandru Rogobete at Antena 3 CNN.

The Minister considers it essential to correlate the number of positions available in the health system with the number of residents in training, emphasizing the need for a predictable human resource planning system.

“The idea is to have a predictable system,” stated Rogobete.

However, the minister admitted that, at present, there is no clear statistic on the number of doctors who will retire in the coming years, an essential indicator for determining the need for medical personnel.

“I would also like to know how many cardiologists will retire in the next four years. There isn't, if you can imagine, there isn't this… Or when the UMFs and the Ministry of Health publish the number of positions and places for residency, this very important indicator is not taken into account. Because this year I published a number of training places for residents, because that's how, historically speaking, the universities gave me the numbers. I'm not sure that these figures are correlated with the need for the number of doctors in certain specialties”, explained the minister.

Map of future places in the medical system

Alexandru Rogobete announced that the Ministry of Health intends to create, together with the universities of medicine and pharmacy, a clear map of the places that will become available in the medical system in the coming years, by specialization.

At the same time, the minister revealed that at the level of the institution there are discussions regarding the reintroduction of the internship and the category of general doctors, which do not follow the classic residency, but an internship period followed by an overspecialization in a niche field.

“There is a discussion and here you have provoked me, I will say in the end, although the discussion was not carried out in detail, including the idea of ​​re-establishing the internship and the category of general doctors, who do not do the residency, but do an internship and then a super-specialization in a niche field. It is standing and exists on the discussion table at the Ministry of Health. We will probably implement this this year as well”. Alexandru Rogobete also specified.