The abolition of the limited number of medicine risks being one of the largest political maquillage operations in recent years. Reality? The entrance test has not disappeared but was postponed with a selection based on university exams and taxes to be paid. Students and professionals in the sector raised the major perplexities.

As the Youth Medical Association for Italy (GMI) explains this new mechanism not only does not solve the problems of the health system, but risks aggravating the training course: “The new selection system is useless and, if possible, harmful. From a medical point of view, it is a fact that we are currently among the countries with the most doctors in Europe: the problem is that there are no specialists in the public and in some branches, because the working conditions are bad. We were future medical students, and in fact many aspiring worked doctors write to us “explains to Toray.it Matteo Sibilla di GMI.

A reform that does not take care

The current model included a national test, certainly improved but fair and equal for everyone. With the new mode, however, the student must first enroll, pay university fees (which in some universities exceed the cost of the preparation courses), face a selection of selection, thus increasing the conditions of competitiveness with the other students.

“Being a medical student increases the risk of suicide compared to the general population” explains Dr. Sibilla: “This system the favoritism, resulting from knowledge with the professors, could have a decisive weight on the study path and if the student is assigned to a place where he cannot move perhaps due to lack of economic possibilities or is excluded he will have to wait for September to enroll in another faculty”.

Many degree courses that students choose as alternatives as biotechnology or biomedical engineering, have their entrance test to local ranking.

The fake news of the doctors who are missing

Italy already has enough doctors: the national average is 4.2 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants, above the OECD average which is 3.7. The problem is not the number of graduates, but the escape from the national health system: low salaries, massacred shifts, lack of protections. By 2026, thousands of family doctors will retire, without adequate generational change.

At the same time, the nurses are too few: Italy has a 1.5 nursing/doctors ratio, against the OECD average of 2.6.

“Already now the number of doctors to cover the under staff is. The problem is that the public no longer attracts young doctors: the current trainees will prefer to go abroad or in the private individual, where they will be a plethora of health workforce, poorly formed and low” highlights Dr. Sibilla in Toray.it.

Many doctors, few specialists: the problem is not the test

The term Pletora Medica indicates a situation in which the number of doctors available exceeds the demand for work or the needs of the health system. The Italian situation is paradoxical since on the one hand we speak of deficiency of doctors, erroneously referring to the lack of specialists in key sectors such as anesthesia and resuscitation, emergency medicine etc. while other specializations attract more candidates than necessary.

This distortion was the result of decades of incorrect programming of the number of places in specialization and uninteractive working conditions. Many graduates remain blocked without being able to access specializations or general medicine bags with the result that the national health system cannot cover the necessary places while young doctors are forced to seek alternative solutions, often abroad or in the private individual.

“How is it possible that this policy still think that it is possible to train 30000 people (and double in the first half) in places that they already cannot form 20000 now?”

Matteo Sibilla, young doctors for Italy

An illusion that does not solve anything

The reform of access to medicine does not face the real problem and the risk is that the national health system loses even more professionals while creating a mass of students intended for a precarious future. An illusion sold as progress, which hides the real problem: the crisis of education and public health.