In all, 14,700 physicians requested the necessary papers from the CMR to be to able work abroad in the past six years, with a peak recorded in 2011, when almost 3,000 doctors sought to leave the country.
“If you are humiliated in every way in your own country, but appreciated and respected in another country, it is very easy: you have to go abroad. When it comes to healthcare policy, us investing in training physicians for richer countries is a nonsense from the get-go,” said Dan Ulmeanu, a surgeon with Regina Maria.
“We need to prepare the physicians for us, not give the highest level of training to people and send them abroad.”
The average net salary in the healthcare system in Romania is 2,076 lei (EUR470), close to the average salary in the country, after having gone up 30% in the past year. Even so, a diplomate physician can earn as much as EUR4,000 in Germany or even more than that with training and specialization.
National Statistics Institute data show Romania’s healthcare system had about 302,000 employees in August, 56,000 of which were physicians. More than 15% of the healthcare staff in Romania works in clinics and hospitals in Bucharest, while in certain counties the number of physicians and additional personnel does not meet the staffing needs of the major county hospitals.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)