Coronavirus: Romania calls in resident doctors, medical students as authorities prepare for spike in cases

The resident doctors will interrupt their regular practice and join doctors in hospitals and emergency units and services, Raed Arafat, the head of the Emergency Situations Department, announced on Wednesday, March 18. The move is meant to strengthen the hospitals’ ability to receive patients as authorities are preparing for a spike in the number of Covid-19 cases.

“Residents in the general medicine, anesthesia, intensive care, infectious diseases specialties will interrupt their resident internships in the departments they have been assigned to and will turn up at advising centers to be included in the schedule of the departments of their specialty,” Arafat explained.

The internal medicine and family medicine residents will also interrupt their internships and will be assigned by the public health departments to ambulance services, emergency units or various hospital departments, according to the existing needs.

Fourth-year medical students will also be called in, on a volunteer basis, in order to support activity in emergency rooms.

So far, more than 200 fourth, fifth and sixth-year students of the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest registered as volunteers to help doctors if they might need this, Hotnews.ro reported. “The recruitment is currently preventive, as students are ready to step in if the existing structures will exceed their capacity,” the Carol Davila University said in a press release.

Arafat also explained that 162 tents have been set up for the medical triage of patients in hospitals and to help streamline traffic at border points.

Meanwhile, some hospitals are looking to hire staff, as is the case of the Marius Nasta Institute, Stiri.tvr.ro reported.

More than 25,000 doctors left the Romanian healthcare system in the last ten years, health minister Victor Costache said at the end of last year.

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