Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said on Monday that next year, Romania will try to find mechanisms to allow the flow of qualified medical personnel from countries other than the European Union to cover the shortage of personnel.

According to him, a regional meeting will be held in Romania in March, which will be attended by 53 member countries of the WHO region and representatives of the European Commission, and issues related to personnel in health care will be discussed.

According to him, the shortage of doctors can be solved with the help of medical personnel from Asia.

• “We want to find, involve in the discussion, find a solution, because the recognition of professional qualifications in the European Union is very strict and cannot be done in any case. And we need to find levers with which a possible flow of qualified medical personnel from countries other than the European Union will be possible, but under certain regulated conditions that may eventually be applied, including procedures for equalization or completion of training in the member states of the European Union , because Romania should adopt the same model as other countries, the recognition of professional qualifications is one of the chapters that were discussed and finalized during Romania’s accession on January 1, 2007,” Rafila told TVR Info.

A new residency exam in the spring

Rafila says there are several “hundreds of seats” that were not filled in the residency exam, and she would like to organize a new residency exam in the spring for the remaining unfilled seats.

• “In family medicine, almost 90% of the places put up for competition are filled, and in others… in emergency medicine, for example, there are very few. It is necessary to make emergency medicine attractive. There is a staffing crisis in the emergency services, including in the reception departments, and we need to find a solution so that the staffing strategy provides enough staff, to encourage them, to find a mechanism to understand why people avoid. The point is not only that they work a lot, but that there should be professional comfort. There should be trust in the coordinated development of the system, which is part of the healthcare system,” Alexandru Rafila said, according to News.ro.