TURIN. All dissatisfied, each for his part: the Region, the doctors. And the minister too. Not that of the University and research but Orazio Schillaci, with responsibility for Health. But the most dissatisfied of all will certainly be the Piedmontese citizens to whom the government has decided to reserve not even 700 places for aspiring doctors for the next academic year – just nine more than the current year -, in a region that suffers from an enormous structural shortage as evidenced by the holes in hospitals, emergency rooms in perpetual apnea and general practitioners who are missing. To date, the situation in Piedmont is this: 1,500 more hospital doctors would be needed to cover all the gaps in the staff. There are some specialties with very serious deficiencies: 250 emergency and urgent care doctors are missing, 250 doctors, 155 in anesthesia and resuscitation, 115 in internal medicine, 110 in general surgery, 200 in pediatrics, 54 in neurology and the same number in orthopedics. A problem within the problem, staying with the specialists, is the disaffection for some specialization schools: 18% of places are not filled, with worrying peaks for clinical pathology, microbiology, emergency medicine, the dropout rate reaches 8, 9%. Not to mention family doctors: based on data from Roberto Venesia, Fimmg Piemonte, at least 300 more would be needed.
In this context, the not even 700 freshmen that the government will insert in Piedmont are very small, even more so if we consider the 331 doctors who left the public health service in 2021 and the 208 who switched to private healthcare or chose local medicine .
And so Alberto Cirio yesterday moved on two fronts: a first contact with Minister Bernini and a request to the rector of the University, Stefano Geuna, to verify the criteria on which the division depends. “The minister reassured me that they are provisional numbers – explained the governor in the evening -. The mechanism that generates them has been inherited from the government, which does not share it, and has set up a table for the ministry to modify it. Personally I consider it profoundly unfair and harmful to Piedmont: I trust that the criteria can be changed as soon as possible».
Even Luigi Icardi, the councilor for health, asks for explanations: «It is not clear how the division criterion could penalize Piedmont, compared to other regions, such as Campania, Lazio and Lombardy, which do not have characteristics and needs so different from ours ». Then the jab: “The distribution of economic resources and the reorganization of the educational offer must be linked to the real needs of Health and not to the internal academic logic of the universities”.
Minister Schillaci, speaking at the inauguration of the academic year of the Catholic University of Rome, was clear: “The numbers relating to access to the faculties of Medicine and Surgery are to be considered provisional, and I believe there will be an expansion”. The Region for its part does not remain at the window.
Opening registered by the unions, who however warn: without prejudice to the ministerial criteria, incomprehensible, the problem is not so much the shortage of graduate doctors but of specialists. «For a long time, specialization contracts were not adequately financed, creating the infamous training funnel – remarked Chiara Rivetti, Anaao Assomed Piemonte -. Fortunately, in recent years the number of scholarships financed by the State, and partly by the Region, has been constantly growing. From 2024, with the arrival of more new specialists and the reduction of the pension hump, the current shortages will begin to decrease. We estimate that in 4-5 years there will be more newly trained specialists than retirements».