2023-09-25 15:14:00
White coats, signs and whistles. Specialist doctors took to the streets in Rome in front of the Ministry of University and Research (Mur) to ask for a reform of the specialization system and related salaries which forces them to work grueling shifts without adequate remuneration which today “makes us slaves” , the doctors scream. “We are paid 1,600 euros a month during specialization but we work 24 hours a day, and with these salaries it is impossible to live in rent in Milan, Rome and Florence. Better to reunify and work as a freelancer”, they tell time.news Salute.
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“It is intolerable – underline the promoters of the event Giammaria Liuzzi (Anaao Giovani), Massimo Minerva (ALS) and Antonio Cucinella (GMI) – to learn that a ministerial working group has been established to reform this anachronistic framework without the presence of even one young doctor. We ask with strength and determination for the inclusion of our representatives in this group or the establishment of a parallel table composed of us, which works in synergy to avoid formulating a reform that is not up to the standards of the many current problems. We cannot hypothesize that a reform of medical specializations will arise without a salary increase, never indexed, which currently amounts to 1,300 euros per month net of university fees, Enpam, the Doctors’ Association and compulsory insurance”.
“We cannot tolerate – they insist – that in the future the specialist doctor is not classified as a professional who also and above all trains in the so-called ‘Learning Hospitals’ (non-university teaching hospitals, and not just crowded together in a few university departments with a ratio of young people doctors beds 10 to 1), with the certification of their skills as happens for medical managers and not through an annual passing exam which is often used as the ‘sword of Damocles'”. Furthermore, “we cannot tolerate the non-abolition of incompatibilities for trainees who claim, in the absence of an exclusivity allowance, to be masters of their own time”.
“Without all this – warn the young doctors – the shortage of specialists in branches such as emergency medicine will never be resolved”, the Meu. “The increase in admissions to Medicine and the greater financing of MEU training contracts will not solve the problem: a structural reform is needed with the MEU resident at the center, who cannot be asked to act as a stopgap at 1,300 euros with zero rights and protections and working alongside token operators who receive up to 700 euros a day”.
In Italy 43 thousand medical specialists: “Underpaid and with few rights”
“Today in Italy around 43 thousand specialist doctors work in hospitals. We are underpaid, we earn 1,300 euros net per month which is less than 8 euros per hour. Unfortunately we are not considered and we have many duties and few rights, we have problems regarding holidays, illnesses and transfers to other locations. We are unable to train well because we act as stopgaps in hospitals and do demoting and repetitive jobs. We only want to train adequately in structures that are not only university polyclinics but also pure hospitals.” This is what Giammaria Liuzzi, national manager of Anaao Giovani, told time.news Salute.
“Above all, we believe that it is necessary to classify the medical specialist like his colleagues in Europe, therefore as in Germany and Spain – continues Liuzzi – We therefore need a reform of the system which has been stuck in 1999, unfortunately we train only in a few places and we are unable to create a different reasoning. We are doctors but we are not under the Ministry of Health but under the Mur. We need – he specifies – a global reform, there are reform bills on which we are still awaiting a response but it is clear that the Mur does not want to modify the status quo”.
Federica’s story
After studying for years on medical books, problems arise for young white coats: specialization. Today post-graduation seems like an obstacle course between bureaucratic delays, few available grants and then the allowance which often doesn’t allow those who have no other entry to work and live in big cities. It is the story of Federica Bennardo, 27 years old, originally from Salerno but in Milan for 8 years where she graduated in Medicine “thanks to a scholarship at Bicocca. Last year I took the test for the competition for schools specializations – he tells time.news Salute – which also went well. I passed the competition for the specialization in Forensic Medicine, not the first choice but I would have liked to try to understand life in the department, something they don’t explain to you when you study Medicine but you have to be far-sighted and understand if that specialization is right for you and I would have liked to try. But I decided not to enter: in Milan there is a crazy real estate bubble and the money from the specialization grant isn’t enough.”
“I pay a very high house rent, excluding electricity and gas costs – continues the doctor who took to the streets in Rome today with her colleagues to protest against the conditions of medical residents – The specialization grant is 1,600 euros , so I decided that it wasn’t convenient for me because as a freelancer you earn much more, even triple. So it’s better to put some money aside and do the specialization in a few years. I worked as a general practitioner , the medical guards, I worked in the RSA, and I was available 7 days a week because I wanted to learn and be in the field”.
Why Milan and not another location for specialization? “The medical training in Milan is very good and I would have liked to continue the path where I graduated”, replies Bennardo who, when asked if his situation is common to other colleagues, replies that “it is very widespread, then of course there are those who are helped by their parents. But those who work in Milan, Turin, Florence and Rome have this problem – he concludes – they are cities that with only the specialization scholarship only allow you to survive and not live”.
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