Romania aims to attract doctors from outside EU to make up for personnel shortage

Romania’s minister of health, Alexandru Rafila, recently revealed his intention to attract qualified medical personnel from countries other than those part of the European Union (EU) in order to cover the current deficit of doctors in the country.

The minister announced a new residency exam in the spring to fill the remaining vacancies in hospitals across Romania during an interview with public TV station TVR Info.

“I would like to organize a new residency exam this spring for the remaining unoccupied places. There are several hundred places that were not filled out [during the past] residency exam. In family medicine, almost 90% of the places made available were filled, but in others – in emergency medicine, for example – very few were filled,” the minister said.

“We need to make emergency medicine attractive. There is a personnel crisis in the ambulance services and in the emergency reception units, and we must find a solution so that the human resources strategy provides enough personnel,” he added.

Romania will host a regional meeting of around 53 states that are part of the World Health Organization in March 2023. Participants will discuss problems related to human resources in health and the certification of medical personnel from countries other than those part of the EU.

“[…] representatives of the European Commission will be present and we want to debate, to find solutions, because certifying professional qualifications in the European Union is very strict, and we need to find the levers by which a flow of qualified medical personnel from countries other than the European Union may be possible, but under some regulated conditions,” minister Rafila said.

Back in the summer, the president of Romania’s college of physicians told HotNews that one of the major problems regarding human resources in the health services sector is that half of the country’s doctors are concentrated in several major cities, leaving hospitals in the rest of the country understaffed.

(Photo source: Ministerul Sanatatii on Facebook)