Bologna, 28 April 2024 – No more limited numbers for access to the Faculty of Medicine. We ask what Marcello Lanari, director of Paediatrics at Sant’Orsola and teacher, thinks.
Professor, what do you think of the announced reform?
“First we will have to identify spaces and teachers to cope with such a high impact of new students for the first semester and also for the following one. Which at the moment does not appear so easy: the classrooms available for courses are scarce and the teachers are in much smaller numbers than just a few years ago. We ourselves in Pediatrics are a third of what we were about ten years ago.”
What convinces you most in the basic text of the reform?
“Certainly the proposal to orient young people already in the last years of high school to identify those who have the greatest aptitude for doing a job that is very particular. The dose of attention to social issues and empathy are peculiar in this profession of ours. I agree I also agree on the fact that the tests as they have been designed in recent years do not identify the person who has the potential to become a good doctor. More oriented tests are needed”.
The aspect that doesn’t convince you?
“Imagine that this reform leads to a good reorganization of services to citizens, in particular in the most lacking sectors such as the emergency room, anesthesia-resuscitation, pediatrics itself. The strong risk is that we find ourselves having many aspiring doctors who they choose specializations that may be profitable, but which do not cover the areas lacking in service to citizens”.
How can we encourage students to choose the specialties they really need?
“In the meantime, I would start with those who have already graduated in Medicine and Surgery with an economic incentive, greater protection of the profession, including the legal one, and a sharp increase in hiring. Burnout also occurs because the workforce is too small.”
So remove the hiring cap?
“Leave immediately, not in a year. Leave immediately, even if limited. Otherwise the professionals leave.”
The problem of specialization schools remains. Was it better to reform just those?
“The two things cannot be separated. But, to avoid the bottleneck that exists after the six-year course, we need to provide answers immediately.”
How do you see medical students in recent years?
“They are more attentive to the quality of life they will build than us, but very well prepared, motivated and with very interesting training courses”.
