There’s a catastrophic shortage of doctors in the province – not even the impressive salaries and allowances entice you to come to work

Panevėžys Vyginta Konteikė is a 33-year-old doctor who, after studying at the Kaunas University of Health Sciences, continued to live and work in the same city. In the temporary capital, the doctor raised a family and worked for some time in various medical institutions in Kaunas, mainly in the admission department.

“Medical studies last 10 years. For so long, a young man is naturally rooted in the city of studies: a circle of friends, hobbies, family, children appears, and finally you start looking for work here ”, admits the doctor.

However, one day this year, V. Konteikė collected all the properties and lived with his family in his native Panevėžys. She was returned to her city thanks to the offer of the Panevėžys district polyclinic to work as a family doctor at the Krekenava outpatient clinic.

This vacancy arose when Ignas Mėlynis, a long-term outpatient general practitioner, died from the COVID-19 virus earlier in the year.

The polyclinic announced in February that it was looking for a doctor and offered him a full-time job to work in Krekenava, promising a salary of 2,500 to 3,500 euros after taxes and bonuses for good work results.

The job advertisement also promised compensation for fuel and lodging if the employee was from another city.

Conditions are better than in the big city.

“I always wanted to go home and work in town. People here are different. However, I also found the working conditions in the Panevėžys district much better than in Kaunas, ”says V. Konteikė, who earns much more in Krekenava than in Kaunas.

The doctor says that he also found new work teams in Krekenava. Now the doctor advises his colleagues in the big cities to look beyond Kaunas or Vilnius, where there is an excess of doctors and a lot of competition.

“They have already asked me how to attract new doctors to smaller municipalities. I have already mentioned: in smaller institutions, patients are completely different, the atmosphere in the team is different. And competitive salaries and good working conditions are important for the new specialists ”, emphasizes V. Konteikė.

Her new duties had to change her plans for her doctor husband. He had no other option in Panevėžys according to his specialty, so he goes from Panevėžys, where his family settled, to work in Kaunas.

The blackboard did not work

In fact, the salaries of doctors in the district and city of Panevėžys already seem quite decent. At the Panevėžys Municipal Polyclinic, according to its director, Karolis Valantinas, the average salary of a family doctor is 2,000 to 2,500 euros per hand.

There are also professionals who earn 4,000 euros. The remuneration, according to the director, depends on the number of patients enrolled by the doctor.

However, although the salaries are quite solid, the director of the polyclinic says that he would still hire at least 5-7 family doctors today.

“The shortage of doctors in the periphery is a long-standing problem, probably the scourge of smaller cities and districts. We follow the paths of the cross in search of the necessary doctors ”, assures K. Valantinas.

Almost a month ago, he had a tremendously interesting idea to advertise the search for a family doctor through billboards on the streets of the city. For two weeks, the institution publicly offered a job offer for 3,000 salaries, but received absolutely no reaction: it received no inquiries about the work at the polyclinic.

“We broadcast and we stopped for two weeks, because that publicity is not in vain”, sighs the director.

Did not receive any residents

According to K. Valantinas, today among the 19 medical institutions of Panevėžys, both public and private, there is a great struggle for doctors. As soon as you at least hear about a doctor who is about to leave, your search begins.

“Our polyclinic employs 23 family doctors, 13 of them of retirement age, who have already turned 65. In five years we will have 17 of those employees, we are completing the age tables of the equipment for the Ministry of Health, we handed it over again in May, but there are no actions or changes, ”says the director.

Previously, according to him, the University of Health Sciences would send at least residents and Panevėžys would tame them for a longer period of time. But for a couple of years, the city polyclinic has not received them either.

The young people, according to K. Valantinas, rescued the institution a lot during the quarantine, they worked in a fever clinic with coronavirus patients, when the older doctors were very afraid of the virus.

However, the director is pleased that only one doctor of honorable age has left the job as a result of the pandemic. She was scared for her health and that of her spouse while working under these conditions.

“It just came to our knowledge then. We return to normal after teleworking, but we are waiting for a vacation, how can we let people rest?” – the head of the institution worries.

Checking for solutions

A month ago, the Panevėžys Polyclinic submitted a proposal to the City Council to adopt a new procedure to attract new doctors to the capital of Aukštaitija. According to K. Valantinas, the medical graduates are just finishing their studies and will start looking for work in July.

“In our opinion, these specialists, for example, would be attracted by the initial contribution to real estate loans. It could be proposed to pay for the residents’ studies during the last two years, forcing the students to work for support for 3-5 years later, which would cost about 14,000 euros. New apartments have been promised to pedagogues in the city center, they would also be suitable for doctors, only here, unfortunately, the laws are being overcome: the polyclinic is a public institution, not a budgetary institution ”, searches K. Valantines. solutions.

To see the doctors, he also sees that other municipalities are already taking more measures. For example, starting in 2018, the municipality of Šiauliai will contribute 5,000 euros per year to the salaries of doctors who have graduated and come to work in this city.

Vilnius, Kaunas or Klaipėda do not need to make such an effort; doctors are drawn to these cities anyway.

“80 percent of educated doctors stay in the big cities. They have to compete for a job and for a much lower salary than ours. There is no shortage of specialists, so the offers are more modest for them ”, Says K. Valantinas.

And so far, the Panevėžys polyclinic has managed to interview only one new doctor who graduated in medical sciences. He will start working at the polyclinic from August.

A third of the doctors are retired.

This year only three new doctors were found in the Panevėžys district polyclinic. The newcomers supplemented the outpatient clinics in Krekenava, Ramygala and Naujamiestis.

Yet another third of all staff at this institution is a major headache for employers.

“There is a shortage of doctors everywhere and it is scary to predict what lies next to us,” sighs Danutė Pajėdienė, deputy chief physician of the polyclinic for personal health care.

The polyclinic currently employs 89 doctors and their average age is 52 years. A third have already passed the retirement age threshold.

This year, the district’s outpatient clinic said goodbye to a single doctor who had dedicated nearly five decades to this work. Two high-level doctors died of coronavirus.

“Our outpatient clinics are in dire need of family doctors, ophthalmologists, nose, throat and ear specialists. We are looking, offering salaries twice as high, we can say that they are the highest in the entire region, and we still find it difficult to find new employees, ”says D. Pajėdienė.

There are advertisements on the website of the Panevėžys district polyclinic, where doctors are offered salaries starting at 2,000 euros per month. The average salary of the doctors who work in it is similar.

And at the end of last year, the polyclinic had placed a job advertisement, in which the indicated salary reached 5,500 euros per month.

Compensation is not an incentive

According to D. Pajėdienė, competitive medical salaries are a significant burden on the institution’s budget. And the district municipality contributes minimally to such searches: doctors who go to work are partially reimbursed for travel expenses. But, according to D. Pajėdienė, such support would hardly be enough even in the city every day, and doctors even from Kaunas and Vilnius come to the district polyclinic to work.

A psychiatrist who lives in the capital already promises not to go to Panevėžys anymore, because it is simply not worth it.

“We are talking with the District Municipality. She does not refuse to help, but so far there are no serious proposals, “says the deputy.