Lame excuses
I heard Lila Asteriou, president of the union of professors at the Medical School of the Athens University, on the radio yesterday dramatizing the insufficient training of aspiring doctors, expressing fears over the potential repercussions, and stressing that it is unfair that there are empty beds in university clinics when patients are packed in hospital corridors. It would be hard to disagree with all this, and even harder to claim that students should be trained by watching videos rather than attending practical instruction at clinics. The present unacceptable situation, however, is no bolt from the blue. It has emerged because many university professors have given up practical instruction in clinics, saying that they will confine themselves to their teaching duties. In truth, however, clinical instruction and teaching are too closely interconnected to be separated. This is why the Health Ministry, implementing the law, has made it clear that by giving up practical instruction in hospitals, university doctors are also resigning from their university clinics. It is common knowledge that university doctors are reacting because they no longer have the right to offer their services at State hospitals while also operating a private surgery. In other words, they are reacting over the loss of a privilege which the State ruled out as unacceptable and which is not valid in any other EU country. Evening-hour surgeries allow doctors to earn considerable additional income which, however, cannot be compared to the excessive and, usually, tax-free revenues they received under the previous regime. Under pressure from the public and recent developments, doctors have fortified themselves behind their demand to establish university hospitals that they will administer exclusively. They want the State budget to cover the operating cost but refuse the Health Ministry’s right to monitor. They are not invoking the public good but the need for autonomy. Their rhetoric conceals a claim to impunity. In reality, by exploiting the ministry’s hesitation to take drastic measures, university doctors are demanding the division of the health system. They want their own hospitals primarily in order to restore their abolished rights through the back door, except in their claim that the presence of managers obstructs the free flow of medical ideas.
