While the alarm has been raised that doctors are leaving Albania, the government has decided to dissolve the National Center for Continuing Education (QKEV). Experts in the field see this decision as absurd and which goes against the professional growth of health specialists, including doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists and pharmacists.
Continuing education has been a legal obligation in our country for years. Which means that the doctor's license is only valid for a period of 5 years, during which the white shirts are obliged to attend scientific conferences and accumulate a total of 150 credits.
If at the end of the 5-year period, the doctor has not completed a minimum of credits, then the doctor's license is no longer valid and must be re-examined. And if he does not pass the exam, then the doctor's license to practice the profession is suspended and his position is declared vacant. This whole procedure also goes through QKEV, which decides how many credits a scientific conference is worth.
On the official website of the National Center for Continuing Education (QKEV) there is a list of about 4 doctors who received only the mandatory minimum of credits during 2016 (over 10 credits).
The same situation is with other health professionals. More specifically, there are about 1900 dentists and over 2 pharmacists and assistant pharmacists who have barely passed the threshold of 5 credits per year.
Translated differently, this means that around 8 health professionals attended only one medical seminar, conference or congress throughout the year. In this gloomy situation of the ongoing education of health specialists in our country, experts think that it will worsen with the new initiative of the government, which will leave the scientific work of white shirts and the increase of capacities in their hands. professional School of Public Administration.
For Isuf Kalon, who has been on the council of QKEV, since it was first established, there is certainly much to improve in the work of this center, but in no way can it be dissolved.
"Medicine is a field that undergoes constant changes and a degree in health cannot predict what a doctor should do in 10 years. Therefore, continuing education has been introduced and every 5 years the knowledge must be reviewed. Has this center been lacking? Of course, but she should not have been left to spontaneity. It should have been in a more organized form. But we all know that this center produced evidence that a significant number of doctors failed to meet their credits", explains doctor Isuf Kalo to Citizens Channel.
In the search for those responsible for what went wrong in this center, he explains that there were two aspects. "First: the capacity of the center and our medicine to provide a new expertise was lacking compared to the requirements. Time showed that there was a mismatch between the capacity of our medicine to offer conferences, training seminars, while pharmacists and dentists were also attached to this center, while the initial idea was to deal with the continuing education of only doctors and nurses. Secondly, this center created a conflict with doctors, since the fees that were charged to attend an accredited conference, seminar or congress, which was then translated into credits, could not be afforded by a good part of doctors. This is because the professional development of doctors was conceived as an individual task and not as a task of the institutions where they work, and this was a mistake for me. And yet, I think that in no way should it be merged, but this center should be reorganized", concludes Kalo.
But while the decision to merge this center was announced in the first public appearance of the "Rama 2" government, it seems that this institution itself is not aware of what will happen.
For the former Minister of Health, Tritan Shehu, this is giving health the death blow. "The Ministry of Health is responsible for the quality of the work of doctors, and for me this is parallel to a wrong policy that health is seeing, merging it with the Ministry of Labour. To do so is to deal the death blow to health," he tells us.
For the former minister of health, the delegation of this competence to the school of administration is also wrong because the continuing education of doctors cannot be the same as that of other professions.
"The introduction of the continuing education center of white shirts under the guise of the school of public administration breaks the chain of continuing education of doctors. The health system has completely different specifics and cannot be confused with other professions. The health system has scientific work, there is research... Of course it should be improved, it should be deeper, but this is not the right way it is being done."
Pëllumb Pipero, a professor at the University of Medicine who has also held the position of policy director in the Ministry of Health (5-2009) for about 2014 years, considers it a wrong move. "QKEV has given evidence that it has been efficient, of course it is an infant stage, but politics should think about how to strengthen it based on competences", says Pipero for Citizens Channel.
But while experts predict that the ongoing merger of the education center will not bring anything to the professional growth of doctors, on the contrary, those affected by this new scheme are not clear about what will happen.
"Apart from that statement in the media, we still don't have anything concrete and we haven't been informed, - says Entela Shehu, director of QKEV", - we currently continue to work the same, and if something happens, I believe that this will happen in the future and not now at the moment", she concludes.
The president of the "Doctor's Order" of Albania also tries to remain neutral. "We still don't know what will happen," Channek Fatmir Brahimaj, president of UMSH, told Citizens. - Continuing education is a very important element in the doctor's work, but we are not clear if it will continue to be with credits or if it will change. However, I think that this is a certain measure that is necessary for education, since in order for a doctor to be relicensed, he must have the necessary credits", concludes Brahimaj, who, like all doctors, is waiting to see what will happen to them.
Author: EK / Citizens Channel
