Plans to allow medical schools in Italy to take in unlimited numbers of students from next year have led to heated debate in the country which has had a strict entrance exam policy since 1997.
New rules for accessing medical schools, which were passed by the Italian senate on 24 April, will allow anyone to enrol for at least a semester, after which they will progress if they attain satisfactory academic credits, although few details have been released.
The new process will end the entrance system run by …
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Decades of underfunding, despite government claims to the contrary, have pushed Italy’s national healthcare system to the brink. Marta Paterlini reports
“Our profession is not given any value any longer.” So read a joint statement from Italy’s healthcare unions in December 2023.
Italy ended 2023 and began 2024 in poor health, following a 24 hour national strike on 5 December1 and plans for another early this year. Tensions are high among its healthcare professionals following disappointment at a newly approved financial bill that did little to tackle concerns about a public healthcare system in dire straits.
“The whole healthcare system is close to collapse,” says Pierino di Silverio, president of Anaao Assomed, Italy’s biggest trade union for doctors. According to the union, Italy needs 15 000 doctors and 65 000 nurses. Long waiting lists on top of pandemic burnout have seen many staff leave national hospitals for the private sector or to work abroad.
Overcrowded
Healthcare professionals in Italy staged a 24 hour national strike on 5 December, as nursing and doctors’ unions took to the streets to protest against pension cuts and other measures set out in the government’s 2024 budget bill.
The major trade unions Anaao Assomed and Cimo Fesmed (doctors of the national health service), Nursing Up, and Cimop (doctors of the private sectors) joined forces to strike and protest in the streets against economic plans set out by the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, which they say will severely weaken Italy’s national health service.
“If the government ignores the needs of health professionals we have no choice but taking action, and this is only …
Hundreds of young doctors from across Italy staged a protest in Rome this week to demand that their rights and benefits be brought in line with European colleagues.
On 25 September, representatives of young doctors’ associations demonstrated in front of the Ministry of University and Research (Mur) in Rome, to demand reforms to the country’s postgraduate specialisation system. The associations have joined forces to call for young resident doctors called specialiszandi to be reclassified as doctors and not students in order to secure greater rights and benefits. They have warned that strike action could follow if reforms are not made soon.
The Italian …
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