By the end of the year, three other professionals will leave the Tiberio business: there are no young people, the prospects are worrying
UDINE. Ten general practitioners have already hung up their coats since the beginning of the year. Three more will do so between now and December. Enough to sound the alarm for the lack of professionals in Udine (and in the Cividalese area too: considering that not all family doctors are already replaced by colleagues who have taken over the management of the clinics and that each doctor can follow up to a maximum of 1,500 and the 1,800 users it goes without saying that the discomfort potentially affects about 15,000 patients.
The alarm was raised by the president of the Udine Medical Association, Gian Luigi Tiberio, who goes further: a projection prepared by the professional order itself estimates that there are 471 general practitioners destined to retire in the next ten years in Friuli Venezia Giulia, more than half of the 780 professionals who currently take care of families residing in the region. There are 115 doctors currently on duty in the Udine District.
“We are progressively witnessing the materialization of a dramatic context, which from serious will become very serious in the space of a few years”, indicates Tiberio. “We have repeatedly urged the institutions to move to take countermeasures, without success. The problem arises in part from the decision to close the number of enrollments in medical faculties, but there are many other reasons that keep young doctors away from the clinics: think of scholarships, which for graduates who choose the specialization course in general medicine they “weigh” exactly half compared to those of colleagues who opt for the specialties ».
Then there are the extended times for entering the rankings: “It takes a year and a half to complete the three attendance of the course”, indicates Tiberio, who then reveals: “In recent days we have welcomed about forty young people to the first registration in the Register: of them, only one has expressed the intention, and only in second place, to become a family doctor ».
In a gloomy picture, the effects of Covid inevitably weigh: “Several colleagues appear willing to anticipate retirement, normally expected at seventy years: it is an effect inevitably also linked to the burnout syndrome that many professionals suffered in the months of the pandemic” , highlights Fabrizio Gangi, general practitioner and director of the regional course that trains family doctors. –