Medical specialisations: the most lucrative and the flight of young doctors
One third of the places are in danger of remaining empty. Boom in applications for plastic surgery, dermatology or gynaecology where it is easier to do private practice. Medical careers are increasingly geared towards lucrative specialisations, while some specialities suffer from a lack of young doctors. The situation calls for urgent measures to boost the choice of these specialisations and improve working conditions
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3' min read
3' min read
Becoming a surgeon or saving lives in the emergency room is no longer the dream in the drawer of those who aspire to wear a white coat. So is being an anaesthetist, radiotherapist, anomapathologist, microbiologist or virologist or even a pharmacologist or working in primary care.
Much more attractive seems to be the career of plastic surgeon, gynaecologist, dermatologist or cardiologist, where the overbooking of young scrubs also seems to be linked to the possibility of being able to do private practice more easily and thus earn more.
At least that is what the numbers tell us about the path of those who, after graduating in Medicine , decide to take the obligatory path of specialisation.
Today in fact, thousands of young doctors fresh out of university are taking part throughout Italy in the national selection test - a quiz of 140 questions to be completed in three and a half hours - to enter one of the 51 specialisation schools (for 1,429 locations) that will make them become white coats to all intents and purposes. About 15,000 specialisation scholarships are up for grabs (the exact number will only be known in September), but as happened last year, at least a third of the places - about 5,000 - are likely to remain unoccupied, with a waste of resources (financing the scholarships costs hundreds of millions) and above all with the spectre of not being able to find certain types of doctor in the hospital.
The much-talked-about shortage of white coats is in fact not generalised, but concerns certain specialities from which, for some years now, young doctors seem to be fleeing, who, in order to specialise, decide not to enrol in certain courses any more, as shown by the figure of uncovered places: "The total coverage level has gone from 89.2% in the 2016/17 academic year to 64.7% in 2022/23, indicating a worrying downward trend.
