The President held a meeting with the leadership of the Ministry of Health and chief doctors of leading medical institutions in cities and regions of the republic. Leaders of the Government of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and the Faculty of Medicine of University named after Taras Shevchenko. The agenda includes issues of reorganizing the system of postgraduate medical education, training and employment of narrow specialists.
Postgraduate education of graduates of the medical faculty of the Pridnestrovian State University today takes place in two formats: internship and residency. A medical graduate can become a doctor only after successful completion of internship. Residency is the next step, involving in-depth study of the chosen medical specialty with a focus on practice. As the Minister of Health of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic Kristina Albul said in the course of the meeting, the internship has been canceled in the Russian Federation since 2016, training is carried out only in residency. The Pridnestrovian minister considers this approach justified and proposes to revise the relevant legislative norms in order to reorganize the system of postgraduate medical education in Pridnestrovie. Work on changing the legislation has already begun: a working group has been created in the Ministry of Health, which includes representatives of the Pridnestrovian State University and the Ministry of Education of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. The President drew attention to the fact that residency, first of all, should be held on the basis of state medical and preventive institutions and only in the absence of specific specialists, additionally on the basis of other medical centers. According to the President, PSU and the Ministry of Health should participate equally in the development of training programs for residents. The President emphasized that this mechanism should be developed and approved by June 1 of this year.
The shortage of specialized doctors is a long-standing problem. Christina Albul connects this state of affairs with a number of factors: low wages, mostly outdated material and technical base of state medical institutions and the attraction of specialists to commercial medical organizations that offer better working conditions. As a temporary measure to solve the problem of shortage of narrow specialists, the Ministry of Health proposed to develop a mechanism to conclude agreements between government agencies and commercial medical organizations. First of all, we are talking about children's specialists. If the consultation of a doctor who is not in the polyclinic network is required, then specialized specialists of commercial institutions will have to receive a referral from the district pediatrician of the child free of charge. In this case, the doctor's work will be paid from the state budget at the rates of institutions in which the specialist works. Vadim Krasnoselsky supported this proposal and drew attention to another problem that directly affects the staff of the healthcare system. We are talking about the lack of a clear legislative mechanism for securing graduates of higher educational institutions in state medical institutions. Students of the medical faculty began to conclude trilateral agreements between the state, the university and the student only in 2019. Previously, graduates, in fact, did not have any obligations to the state.
Summing up the results of the meeting, Vadim Krasnoselsky called on those present to actively team effort to solve the identified problems. The President called on the participants to take a balanced approach to reforming the branches of medicine.
