Number closed in Medicine, there is a solution: it includes money and foreign students

Not later than five years ago he wrote the National Federation of Orders of Surgeons and Dentists, powerful medical union well represented in Parliament whoever commands: “Fnomceo believes that for the academic year. 2015/2016 a number of hits scheduled to the degree courses in medicine and surgery equal to 6500 both adequate to satisfy the turnover of doctors and will not risk generating a new medical plethora […]”.

In support of the position he argued as follows: “The statements made a few weeks ago by the President of the Cun, prof. Andrea Lenzi, according to which 7000 accesses would be enough to satisfy the future requirement of doctors […]”. The medical unions and the Cun (National University Council) asked for a further one contraction of the scheduled accesses to the Faculties of Medicine and Surgery of the Italian universities which at that time were around 10 thousand units a year.

Considering that about 85% of the students graduate, it meant about 8500 graduates a year. They wanted less, who knows if for corporate regurgitation – alla health care masses, moreover in an increasingly old and needy country, responded with the pretense of preserving the caste – or for fear of competition professional, seasoned with planning fury from real socialism out of time.

Until 1969 one entered Medicine with a classical or scientific high school diploma, in December of that year the Parliament approved the Codignola Law: anyone could enroll as long as they have a five-year high school diploma. These were the years of the mass school and this was one of the most evident effects of the social changes of that time. Medicine also recorded a boom of students first and then graduates, but even then the bottleneck was represented (as today) by specializations.

Thirty years later – to signify that times had really changed – Parliament approves the Zecchino Law which establishes the programmed number for some faculties, including Medicine: each university would define the maximum number of students who can be accepted on the basis of teachers, courses, facilities and the estimated need for doctors.

To the inevitable protests for this “closure”, the legislator, but also the medical corporations and university baronies opposed the usual mix of good reasons and private interests: too many students do not allow a didactics effective (true, just increase the teachings), the equipment is not enough to withstand a mass influx (ditto), too many doctors means too many unemployed, forced to emigrate by making the State waste the resources used to train them (in fact, since there is a limited number, our graduates are all here working on permanent contracts, paid just and freed from the slavery / dependence of baronie that govern university politics). In short, the usual theater for the benefit of a country where senile dementia seems to have caught the entire population even before getting old, starting with its political class.

In September of this year, 66,638 aspiring doctors competed for the 13,072 places (2000 more than last year) offered by Italian universities, paying a fee of 100 euros, triple the amount in the past. For those who have made it in, the hopes of success are still around 85%, so in 7 years we will have about 11 thousand new doctors available to fill one of the 70 thousand vacancies that are already being generated as a result of the retirements, expansions of services and new needs of an increasingly old population in need of care.

On the other hand, well before the pandemic, the prevention has disappeared from the radar: home visits, school medicine, Usca, pediatric services – only to recall the fundamentals of territorial basic medicine, the one of which urgency has returned – are all services that little by little ended up in general medicine for a fee, the one that doesn’t even cost dear, but that marks the deep gap between those who can afford it and those who can’t.

Choices similar to the Italian ones have been made in the past by Germany, only that Merkel, realizing the gap that was being created between the health needs of the population and the immediate availability of professionals who would give satisfaction, used migration policies to “supply” also doctors and nurses. Our country first clipped the wings of many “our good guys” by forcing them to compete with one-off tests – knowing that only one in 6 could do it, whatever the score achieved – then it used the arrival of people desperate to excite the belly making the rest of the body sick.

We do as in France: we abolish the limited number and we set up a free first year with barrage exams. Those who pass them go on, those who can’t make it spend them on collateral and related degree courses. We do like the rest of Europe: we double specialties are money well spent to train professionals and operators in sufficient quantity and quality to meet present and future needs.

While we’re at it, let’s do what it would be logical, especially in this emergency: let’s stop asking for the citizenship to the aspiring doctors and nurses who are trying to recruit these days. Let’s check they are up to it, we need this.

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