Media: Romanian resident doctors may earn EUR 1,200 monthly starting 2018

First-year resident doctors in Romania may earn EUR 1,200 gross monthly starting January 2017, according to local Economica.net. Corneliu-Florin Buicu, a Social Democrat Party (PSD) deputy and president of the Health and Family Committee within the Chamber of Deputies, told Economica.ne that the salaries will increase to reach these levels and that the state has the needed resources to grant these increases, which were promised by PSD in their governing program. Buicu also said that implementing the measure starting January of next year is both feasible and realistic. A first-year resident doctor currently makes between EUR 400 and EUR 500 per month. The low pay has been one of the reasons Romanian doctors have been leaving the country in recent years to work abroad. The phenomenon reached by 2015 alarming levels, with estimates of healthcare union Sanitas putting the number of doctors who left between 2009 and 2015 at 14,000, about half of the country’s doctors. At the same time, a third of hospital positions in Romania are vacant as a result of the situation. A 2016 draft law that looked at increasing salaries in the public sector put the monthly salary of a first year resident physician at EUR 427 (RON 1,922). Over 36,000 doctors, dentists and pharmacists have requested, starting 2007, certificates that would allow them to work abroad, according to Health Ministry data quoted by Economica.net. Reuters: Nearly a third of hospital positions in Romania are vacant as country experiences “healthcare exodus” Romania’s brain drain: Half of Romania’s doctors left the country between 2009 and 2015 editor@romania-insider.com