One hundred foreign doctors respond to Sicilian Region’s call

Last Updated: March 30, 2024

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There are a hundred foreign doctors recruited and placed in service or in the process of placement by the Sicilian Region following an open call issued by the Department of Strategic Planning of the Health Department to address the shortages of personnel in the Sicilian healthcare system. The need identified by the healthcare companies is 1,494 units. “Having already reached the quota of a hundred professionals from non-European countries who have responded to our call in just a few months is certainly a great result,” says the President of the Region, Renato Schifani. The doctors are contracted and placed in service by the healthcare and hospital companies where they are destined, mainly in the emergency rooms, after linguistic training and with the logistical support of the mayors of the municipalities where they operate. The recruitment activity is coordinated by the Department of Strategic Planning, which will evaluate other applications in the coming days. The government is doing everything possible to alleviate the shortage of doctors, pending the entry into force of the regional regulation providing a temporary allowance for doctors to be assigned to frontier hospitals and structural solutions such as increasing the number of admissions to medical school. The disciplines indicated in the call are cardiology, surgery, gastroenterology, gynecology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, orthopedics, pediatrics, anesthesia, psychiatry, urology, and neurology. So far, 64 doctors have been recruited, and interviews are already scheduled for the first days of April for another 36 whose resumes have been deemed suitable. Requests are prioritized based on the chronological order of arrival and evaluated at least every two weeks by a special commission formed by department heads of different companies.