Will the lack of doctor and nurses affect the quality of health care in Czech hospitals?

The Czech Doctors’ Association is ringing the alarm. It says that Czech hospitals may not be able to guarantee the current quality of health care for much longer due to a lack of doctors and nurses. More and more Czech doctors are accepting job offers from medical institutions in Western Europe, particularly Germany and Austria, where they claim to have better facilities, higher salaries and more respect.

Milan Kubek

The Czech Doctors’ Association claims that the country has a serious problem in the making. The brain drain of young Czech doctors and nurses is no longer being compensated by medical graduates from the East seeking jobs in the Czech Republic. According to data provided by the association, hospitals around the country currently lack around 630 doctors, about twice as many as two years ago. The number of private practitioners has also dropped for the first time this year. The president of the Czech Doctors’ Association, Milan Kubek, says the situation is likely to get worse.

“We don’t know how many doctors exactly leave the country, but our association issues a Certificate of Good Practice to anyone interested in working abroad and we have issued nearly 2000 of them over the past six years. According to our information there are currently around 800 Czech doctors working in Great Britain and Ireland and around 300 in Germany.”

Mr Kubek says the outflow of Czech doctors is caused mainly by low salaries. On average, doctors in hospitals work 250 hours a month and receive around 45,000 crowns, which is twice the average salary. In recent years, the Czech Republic increasingly relied on medical graduates from Eastern Europe but Mr Kubek says they are no longer interested in working here.

“The health ministry last year launched a programme to attract doctors from Bulgaria and Romania, but no one came. Romanians prefer to work in France and Bulgarians go to Britain or Germany. The salary we offer them here is not worth it. We used to have a lot of Slovak doctors, whose numbers grew steadily up until 2005. However, the economic situation in Slovakia has improved, so new doctors don’t come anymore and those who used to work here are now gradually returning home.”

Yet paradoxically, the Czech Republic still has more doctors per capita than many other EU countries. So how come there are not enough doctors? Milan Kubek again:

“The average age of Czech doctors keeps growing. Two thirds of our paediatricians are currently over 50 and one fifth are over 60. Only 7 percent are under 40 years of age. Another problem is the existing barrier between Czech hospitals and the private healthcare sector. Doctors working in hospitals find it difficult to start a private practice and vice versa. And there is also the fact that it is an ingrained practice in the Czech Republic to keep a patient under observation for longer than absolutely necessary, which requires more beds per capita.”