Half of Russian doctors know colleagues with fake qualifications

Almost half of the Russian medical workers surveyed admitted that they know colleagues with fake documents on the assignment of a qualification category – the second, first or highest. According to survey participants, doctors do this to improve their status, increase their chances of employment, or because of additional payments. The Ministry of Health states that there are only isolated cases of falsification of extracts from orders for the assignment of a qualification category, and they were the basis for initiating criminal cases.

A survey of medical workers was conducted by the professional service Action Medicine (since 2016, it has been providing information and expert support to employees of medical organizations). Service expert Natalya Zhuravleva told Kommersant that the topic of fakes surfaced in the spring, when the company that owns a large portal of reviews about doctors ProDoctors decided to check the documents on the qualification group from several doctors from Krasnodar. To do this, the portal requested data from the Moscow Department of Health – the doctors claimed that they were certified there. At first, the depzdrav refused to provide information, but later went forward. As a result, it turned out that the data on the qualification category of doctors do not correspond to reality.

It is “extremely difficult” to assess the real volume of the market for fake certification documents precisely because the health authorities are reluctant to disclose such information, and previously refused to provide it at all, emphasizes Natalia Zhuravleva. Therefore, Action Medicine conducted a separate survey on this topic; it was attended by 457 medical workers — users of the service, as well as subscribers of large professional communities in social networks. Of these, 59% are doctors, 22% are senior staff (chief doctors, deputy chief physicians, chief and senior nurses), 19% are paramedical personnel. At the same time, 299 respondents (65%) have a qualification category certificate. Of these, 55% know that the document was checked for authenticity. Another 12% find it difficult to answer whether there was an inspection; 33% did not have a check.

The survey showed that 43% of respondents know colleagues who use fake qualification certificates. So answered 51% of doctors, 25% of managers and 40% of nurses. They believe that their colleagues use fakes “to raise their status, to increase the flow of patients” (51%); to increase the chances of employment (51%); solely because of surcharges (21%).

More than half of doctors (56%) believe that colleagues did not undergo certification on their own because of the complexity of the procedure. Approximately the same number (54%) indicated incomprehensible certification conditions. The third popular option is the lack of time due to the high workload (41%).

The head of the Moscow branch of the medical workers’ trade union “Action”, gynecologist Maria Gubareva says that the qualification is indeed “a labor-intensive, time-consuming process that few decide on.” The results of the survey, in her opinion, “quite reflect” the real situation: “Yes, these certificates can be bought. There are a lot of companies that offer such services, and most of them do it through official structures. That is, the certificate will be completely official. There are probably fake ones too. But if a person comes from a medical institution, because the management insists that he receive a category, there is no difficulty in doing this officially, since all the certification commissions usually know each other. The report of the previous opponent is taken, the surname and name are corrected. If all this is lowered from above, then there are no problems.

Larisa Popovich, director of the Institute for Health Economics at the Higher School of Economics, agrees that some doctors receive fake certificates, but “not in the percentage” that the survey showed. In her opinion, in order to accurately assess the situation, a deeper study with a large number of respondents is needed. However, Mrs. Popovich is sure, health care organizers should be concerned “not so much with the identification of “hares” and their capture”, but with the creation of favorable conditions for the professional growth of physicians. “If they have a difficult history with salaries, they try to somehow earn money in this way,” continues Larisa Popovich. “That, too, must be fought. It is necessary to equalize salary conditions for the same medical functions throughout the country, and not make doctors from the Ivanovo region rush to Moscow with all their might for a higher salary and try to prove that they have super certificates.”

Commenting on the results of the survey, the Ministry of Health noted: the document confirming the fact of qualification is an extract from the act (order) on the assignment of qualification categories. “Thus, it requires additional clarification about which certificates are being discussed in the survey,” the agency said in a response. Action Medicine clarified: the orders of the ministry indicate that the commission is obliged to make an extract from the act, however, the regional health authority often issues an official certificate of category assignment to health workers on its basis.

The Ministry of Health also emphasized that the employer checks the authenticity of the document “in the presence of doubts”: “There are isolated cases of forgery of extracts from orders for the assignment of a qualification category, which was the basis for initiating criminal cases by the competent authorities.” The ministry added that they are implementing a pilot project “to optimize and automate” the certification procedure for medical and pharmaceutical workers to obtain a qualification category “through the use of the Unified Portal of Public Services”: “This will minimize the number of documents submitted, shorten the procedure time, increase the transparency of the process and ensure opportunity for qualification category verification”.

Natalya Kostarnova