Czechia is running low on paediatricians. What’s the impact?
When your child isn’t feeling well, the next step any parent would take after over the counter medicine would be a paediatrician – but that’s not so easy any more in Czechia. Today, many Czech parents don’t have a general practitioner for their child, meaning more end up going to emergency rooms for more minor issues, causing a backlog in hospitals. Czech Radio reporter Lucie Pávová told me more about the issue.
“The main problem is that the paediatricians in the Czech Republic are getting older. Right now, there are about 2,000 of them – but half of them are older than 60. This is a big problem, especially because younger paediatricians don’t want to work in smaller towns, cities, and villages. There is a small town called Tachov near the German border – and the issue is that the few paediatricians who are working in the town are older and will retire soon, and no one younger wants to replace them.”
What impact is this having on the care parents or caregivers are able to get for their children?
“There’s two sides to this. The minister of health, Vlastimil Válek, has brought up the fact that not every parent has a paediatrician for their child, a primary healthcare provider – parents have to do a lot of research to find a doctor for their child. The second problem is, that if you live in a smaller town like Tahov, and your child gets sick at night, you would usually go to the children’s emergency room, but right now there aren’t enough paediatricians who are working there. Then you’d have to go to another ER that could be an hour long drive away from where you live, and this is really not good.”
Why is it that there’s a shortage of paediatricians? Is this not an appealing area for young people studying medicine?
“The Ministry of Health says it’s because they weren’t focussing on this area of medicine, but now they’re trying to change this. They are saying that young medics are interested in paediatrics, so it should get better – but this is going to take some time before they graduate and are ready to work.
“The other day, the Czech government passed a bill that’s not about paediatricians, but rather about stomatologists. The government agreed that it would be good to make it easier for stomatologists from places like Ukraine to work here in Czechia. A similar approach could be applied in the paediatrician field.”
So essentially foreigners who are qualified to fill these gaps?
“Yes. One part of paediatricians are saying that the emergency room system needs to change a bit, so there are less parents bringing their children to the ER with less urgent needs so the ER’s aren’t overwhelmed.”
So parents wouldn’t be coming in with their kids for minor things, like headaches.
“Yes, exactly, that’s what happens sometimes, and it shouldn’t. For things like this, you should be taking your kid to the general practitioner. But then it’s the same problem, that many parents don’t have a general practitioner for their child.”
