It was thought that the trend of doctors leaving has decreased, but the data says otherwise. About 1,200 doctors have left Bosnia and Herzegovina in the past five years.
Those who remain are working under increasing pressure. On the one hand, dissatisfied with the status and relationship of the authorities, on the other hand, faced with the growing dissatisfaction of patients, because with the existing staff they cannot meet their needs, writes BHRT.
In the Zenica emergency room, the staff have their hands full – but there are not enough workers. Dissatisfaction with the state of healthcare at one point even culminated in an attack on the staff. Since then, the Zenica emergency room has insurance.
“A new cross-section of the situation needs to be made, the health institutions should be paid from the funds for an adequate number of teams according to the number of patients, and to enable the health workers to do their regular work and reduce the number of overtime hours. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has ever publicly said that when you drive on the Doboj-Sarajevo highway, only in Zenica will a doctor come to the field if, God forbid, you need an emergency medical service,” says Ahmed Pašalić, an emergency medicine specialist at the Emergency Department of the Zenica Health Center.
Our country does not have nearly as many doctors as it needs. Namely, in the last five years alone, almost 1,200 doctors of general medicine and specialists left Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is no longer about money, but about the attitude towards the profession and valuing the work.
“Doctors are the ones who carry the health system, in ten cantons there are almost ten different coefficients. There are very few cantons that have managed to equalize the coefficients for doctors, and all the others have lower coefficients, with one of the lowest in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Central Bosnia Canton, almost a fifth lower than the highest coefficient in Zenica. In Tuzla, you have a situation where doctors have also announced a strike”, claims Marina Berberović from the Union of Professional Unions of Doctors of Medicine and dentistry in FBiH.
Doctors in the Central Bosnia Canton are also announcing a strike, as negotiations for a collective agreement have been going on for months. The Trade Union points out that they have reached an agreement with the Government, but the finalization is missing.
“We agreed on 10 percent for all doctors of medicine and dentistry, together with specialists, but the Government’s negotiating team returned to an offer that we have been rejecting for a year,” points out Antonijela Križanac from the Union of Doctors of Medicine and Dentistry SBK.
Due to the overall relationship compared to most of the European ones, the domestic system looks more and more like a “flow” instead of a quality health service, and the workers are the least to blame for this.
“Overload and a large number of patients leads to the fact that the examination lasts only a few minutes, which is not enough. We ask that the examination time be defined and the number of patients per family medicine team be reduced, in order to relieve health workers and patients get more time and better service”, adds Marina Berberović.
In addition to doctors, other medical staff are also leaving. Evidence of this is provided by the data on the translation of documents.
“A lot of people are leaving, primarily healthcare, then artisans, and I would say the third place is the IT sector. There are still the most translations when it comes to healthcare workers. It is a quality and young staff,” reveals Belma Shator, a permanent court interpreter for the German language.
“We need to stop this trend of attrition of our staff that we train, in which a lot of financial resources are invested”, adds Harun Hodžić, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zenica.
“We are always guided by the fact that we are doctors, but we are also patients at the same time. As much as we want it to make our work easier, we also want patients to have the health care they deserve,” concludes Antonijela Križanac.
And in order to educate one specialist, almost 300,000 convertible marks are needed. Ultimately, in this case, the diagnosis is clear. The only question is – is there a readiness for appropriate therapy.
