Lukasz Jankowski: There is no permission for students to play with their dreams

"Excessive shortages of medical staff did not meet the needs of treatment entities and patients. The Supreme Audit Office assessed that the Minister of Health acted in an ad hoc manner and failed to ensure proper planning and development of medical staff. There was no long-term strategy to determine, among other things, the number of doctors and nurses needed, no proper analytical tool for estimating staffing needs was created, full data on medical professionals was not taken care of, and legislative work at the Health Ministry was protracted," reads the announcement from the NIK.

As early as 2016, the Chamber warned that attempts to make up for years of backlog by accelerating the cycle of medical training risked a decline in the quality of education. Since then, limits on enrollment in the medical faculty have been increased, changes have been made to the recruitment process for specialty training, and regulations have been introduced that provide for support, from the state budget, for those pursuing paid medical studies with the obligation to work them off later in public health care. According to the NIK, however, everything was happening without a long-term strategy. In the case of a quarter of the audited universities providing medical education, irregularities were found related to the recruitment process.

"Staff shortages among lecturers were also a problem, especially in newly created faculties by universities that had no previous experience in training medical staff. This posed a real threat to the proper level of teaching," the NIK points out.

- The document says in black and white that some of the audited universities do not have sufficient academic staff and facilities," Lukasz Jankowski commented for Onet Morning.

- I have déjà vu from 2017, when we had an increase in health care spending on our banners in the residents' protest. Today, the CSO says they are not even 5 percent of GDP, and where there is talk of 6 or 7 percent. We also wanted to fight for quality then. Today, the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Health are effectively hindering this fight for us by allowing medical faculties to open at universities where there is no anatomicum and students have to travel several hundred kilometers to the dissecting room. There are already voices of students who say that there is no agreement to play with dreams," said the NIL president.