WARSAW Across Poland, patients in need of hospital treatment are facing a growing crisis: Wards are closing due to lack of staff.
The country is already short of 20,000 to 50,000 doctors. That s hitting a health care system battered by the pandemic, which forced many hospitals to convert their space into COVID-19 centers and put other treatments on the back burner.
But once the pandemic passes, it ll become clear that there are deeper problems that will take years to address, doctors say. A study by the Economic University of Kraków last year found that almost 30 percent of doctors want to limit or change their work after the COVID-19 crisis, with 9 percent planning to emigrate and 6 percent thinking of quitting the profession.