The NIK audit revealed that the deficit of medical staff in many branches of medicine is one of the factors limiting availability of health services. At the same time there are significant regional differences in medical staff distribution. Also, there are more and more elderly people among medical staff. For instance, among doctors licensed to practise their profession, the percentage of persons over 65 years of age went up from 18.1% in 2006 to 20.4 in 2012. It is similar with nurses and midwives. Besides, as experts say, currently we have to do with the second wave of doctors who go abroad to stay there permanently.
The NIK audit will seek answers to the following questions:
- Has the demand for specialists in various healthcare areas been defined? What has the Ministry of Health or the National Health Fund done about that?
- What kind of efforts have been taken to enable hiring doctors - specialists to meet the existing needs?
- Do the recruitment systems of individual universities take account of the demand for these schools’ graduates?
- Does the education process correspond with the adopted standards?
- Are there any barriers in access to the specialisation and where do they come from?
- What actions are taken to limit emigration of professional medical staff educated in Poland?
- What do the hospital founding bodies do to hire doctors - specialists for their branches?
The audit results will be presented to the public opinion in the third quarter of 2015.
