Doctors believe that increasing salaries and housing assistance will correct the problem of outflow of personnel from medicine

To increase the popularity of medical professions and reduce the outflow of personnel from this field, it is necessary to minimize paperwork, increase salaries and resolve the issue of housing. This is the opinion of the vast majority of doctors surveyed in February by the professional service Aktion Medicine. Almost two-thirds of doctors would like to be treated like police officers and soldiers and thus protected from violent patients. And yet, despite the difficulties, Russian doctors for the most part do not regret that they once chose medicine, still considering their goal to help people.

From February 15 to 29, the professional service “Aktion Medicine” conducted a survey of health workers about the prestige of the profession. 500 respondents took part in it: 68% represented nursing staff, 16% were doctors, 9% were management staff; 6% – other health workers (employees of diagnostic laboratories, etc.).

The outflow of doctors from the healthcare system in 2023 amounted to 83,777 people (inflow – 94,683); in 2022, the same figures were 99,074 and 90,932 people, respectively. The Medvestnik publication provides such data with reference to Valeria Shlemskaya, director of the Industry Center for Competence and Organization of Training of Qualified Personnel for the Healthcare System of the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University of the Ministry of Health. In early February, the department’s chief freelance cardiologist, General Director of the Chazov National Medical Research Center of Cardiology, Academician Sergei Boytsov, said that the problem of personnel shortages should be solved through the popularization of the profession. Representatives of the Aktion Medicine service decided to find out the reaction of the medical community to this point of view.

Respondents, in particular, were asked whether such a mentioned measure could help retain doctors in the profession. Nearly half of the nurses surveyed (44%) agreed with this statement. Doctors mostly (57%) disagree. Nursing staff as a whole, judging by the survey results, are more optimistic. When asked whether you would advise your younger self to go into medicine, 65% of representatives of this category answered in the affirmative and only 25% admitted that it was not worth the effort spent on studying. Among doctors, 52% of respondents do not regret their choice of profession, and a third (32%) came to the conclusion that it was not worth the time and effort spent.

The answers of doctors and nurses to the question of what measures will help keep medical workers in the profession turned out to be similar: it is enough to increase salaries and resolve the housing issue (this is the opinion of 70% of surveyed representatives of nursing staff and 56% of doctors) and minimize paperwork (69% and 75% respectively). Another 67% of doctors believe that it is necessary to give them the right of immunity, like police officers and military personnel.

Let us recall that a bill “aimed at increasing the protection of medical workers and strengthening the prestige of the medical profession” was introduced to the State Duma on May 18, 2021 by deputies from A Just Russia, Fedot Tumusov and Alexander Terentyev. They proposed tightening administrative and criminal liability “for insult, harm to health, bodily harm and death while a health worker is performing his official duties.” It was proposed to equate employees of state medical organizations with military personnel, police officers, firefighters, employees of the National Guard and the Federal Penitentiary Service, for whom, its authors emphasize, there is a special procedure for state protection of rights, freedoms, health and life. In November 2023, the State Duma rejected the bill. Negative feedback was provided by the State Duma Committee on Health Protection and the Government of the Russian Federation.

It should be noted that the motivation of the participants in the Aktion Medicine survey in choosing a profession is interesting. Thus, 35% of doctors admitted: “In my time it was an honor.” This is the second most popular answer. 61% of nursing staff and 53% of doctors said they wanted to save lives and help people. “The main love in the profession” was 39% of respondents who named helping people, 14% – the situation when a patient gets better, and 8% simply love their job. Most of all, respondents dislike “paperwork” and reporting (20%), disrespect from patients towards medical staff (10%) and low wages (10%).

The competition for medical universities is huge, recalls leading expert of Aktion Medicine Natalya Zhuravleva; last year, according to the Ministry of Health, it was 12 people per place. Consequently, she continues, disappointment sets in for many later, in actual medical practice. “Survey participants believe that increasing patient adherence to treatment will also help retain doctors in the modern healthcare system. Popularization of this approach and personal responsibility for health should, of course, rest with the state,” she comments. Mrs. Zhuravleva emphasizes that most of the medical workers called helping people, successful outcomes, mercy “the main love” in their profession – “this means that it is necessary to popularize in society not only the profession of a doctor, but also empathy, the desire to help people, then our medical workers there will be more.”

The president of the Doctors’ Defense League, Semyon Galperin, agrees with the main results of the study. In Soviet times, doctors also earned “not much,” but they were respected in society, he recalls. “Today being a doctor is not a prestigious, low-paid job; the doctor does not feel protected,” Mr. Galperin believes. “Therefore, we need to fundamentally change the attitude towards doctors: stop blaming them for all the problems in healthcare, stop closing medical institutions and laying off medical workers, because many of them will leave their specialty, and, of course, honestly fulfill promises regarding payments.”

Natalia Kostarnova