Doctors will be provided with military assistance – Newspaper Kommersant No. 49 (7494) dated 03.23.

As Kommersant found out, starting next year, the Ministry of Health intends to quadruple the number of military training centers (formerly called military departments) in medical universities – from 4 to 17. They will train students in training programs for career officers and reserve officers. Deputy Yana Lantratova (SRZP) pointed out the need “in the context of the emerging military-political situation” to revive military departments in civilian medical universities. This is supported by 79% of physicians, showed a January survey of the mobile application “Doctor’s Handbook”.

On Tuesday, First Deputy Head of the State Duma Committee on Education, Yana Lantratova, asked the Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko about the prospects for the emergence of military departments in medical universities in Russia. “Given the relevance and social significance of this issue in the context of the emerging military-political situation, I ask you, dear Mikhail Albertovich, to consider the possibility of implementing measures aimed at strengthening the military medical component of the education of future military medical specialists, and also to inform you whether it is planned to increase the number military departments in the medical universities of the country, ”RIA Novosti quotes the appeal of Ms. Lantratova.

Kommersant asked the Ministry of Health to comment on the deputy’s appeal. The department reported that at present, four universities subordinate to the Ministry of Health – Sechenov University, Evdokimov Moscow State Medical University, Rostov State Medical University, Pacific State Medical University – have military training centers (VTCs). The VUC trains students under the programs of military training for regular officers (implemented during six years of study) and training for reserve officers (four years of study; beginning of studies in the second year).

Until 2019, the system of military training for students of civilian universities was conducted in two formats: military departments and faculties of military training; military training centers. In the first case, a student after graduation became a private, sergeant or reserve officer. After that, he was not required to serve in the army. After training in military training centers, university graduates became officers and were required to serve three years in an officer position in accordance with the received military registration specialty (VUS).

After the amendments to the law “On Military Duty and Military Service” came into force, the training of both officers for active service and officers, sergeants and privates in the reserve began to be carried out only in newly formed military training centers.

The Ministry of Health of Russia also told Kommersant that “in order to train reserve officers, taking into account the existing educational and material base and staffing (necessary classrooms, facilities for practical training, office and auxiliary premises),” monitoring was carried out of the readiness of educational organizations to open new VUC. As a result, 13 subordinate universities “showed their readiness” to train reserve officers in military registration medical specialties from 2024. The issue, stressed in the medical department, is being worked out jointly with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

In 1990, there were military departments in 441 universities in the Soviet Union. In 2005, when the Ministry of Defense announced its intention to reduce the departments by almost seven times, there were 229 of them. Now there are about 120 VUTs, and their number is increasing every year.

Yana Lantratova, in her appeal, referred to the results of a survey of doctors conducted by the team of the Doctor’s Handbook mobile application. More than half of the civilian doctors, as it turned out, do not know how to provide military field assistance.

Only a little more than a third of physicians (38.5%) confirmed that their military position and higher educational qualifications in the military card correspond to the received medical education.

A similar number of medical specialists (36%) answered that they were assigned the specialty of middle or junior medical staff, another 8% said that they received a specialty that was not related to medicine at all. The vast majority of doctors (79%) supported the return of military departments to medical universities. Their position was influenced by the “events of 2022”: 33% answered that they need to be prepared for any possible scenarios, another 18% are sure that military doctors need the support of civilian colleagues, and 16.5% decided to get HUS precisely because of the cases when fellow doctors were mobilized for non-medical specialties, such as marksmen.

In the midst of partial mobilization, a deputy doctor of medical sciences Sergey Leonov applied to the Ministry of Defense with a request to promptly revise the “military registration specialties of doctors, depending on their civilian specialization.” He spoke about the numerous questions of doctors related to the fact that their HQs do not correspond to qualifications or work activities.

As a result, Mr. Leonov pointed out, there were cases when traumatologists or surgeons were called up for service as junior staff.

Semyon Galperin, president of the interregional public organization League for the Defense of Doctors, calls the reduction of military departments in medical universities a mistake: “As a result, we have situations where a doctor after graduation enters the army and serves in a different specialty, which is irrational and neither the army nor the doctor needs , nor the state. But under the conditions of a special military operation, Mr. Galperin believes, it is not enough to revive military departments in medical universities. In his opinion, it is necessary to introduce additional training in military medicine and in medical organizations – by analogy with the annual training in emergency medical care.

First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Health Protection Fedot Tumusov (SRZP) considers the creation of the VUTS an “urgent necessity”: “The danger will only increase. I think we will live in this mode not for a year, but for the next decade.” As in the Soviet Union, military departments should be created in every state university, he believes. “But I would not drive everyone there. Students should be able to attend them on a voluntary basis, there should be measures for both moral and material incentives for those who want to receive an additional military specialty, ”concludes Mr. Tumusov.

Natalya Kostarnova, Anna Vasilyeva