‘Don't Even Try To Run Away’

The Ministry of Health has issued a “manifesto” for medical university graduates.

Yesterday, BelTA published an article that can safely be called a “manifesto” of the Ministry of Health regarding the situation with the distribution of medical school graduates. The topic is painful and resonant, it concerns the fates of dozens of thousands of people. If we filter out all the non-relevant information, we will see two main, contradictory messages from the state: the first is “you will perish without us”, and the second is “don't even try to run away”.

The Telegram channel “White Coats” asked Lidziya Tarasenka, an endoscopist and gastroenterologist, and coordinator of the Medical Solidarity Fund, to comment on some quotes from this text.

Ministry of Health officials say: “Employer/government-sponsored education provides stability, in which applicants themselves and their parents are interested, as demonstrated by this year's admissions campaign. The Ministry of Education and admissions committees of educational institutions received calls from parents of applicants asking what specific organization their children will work for after completing their studies. This suggests that applicants want to know what specific organization they will work for in the future already at the stage of admission to educational institutions. This means that they consciously choose their work placement.”

“Here we see a clear substitution of concepts,” Lidziya is sure. “It is obvious: when applicants and their parents want to know where they will be placed, this is a desire to at least somehow predict the future, choose one of the lesser evils or prepare for the worst. If these people had a choice, they would never choose their final place of work in this form at the admission stage. What kind of “reassurances” are these that cannot be refused in the future?

In a normal situation, girls and boys entering a university are only worried about how much their profession will be in demand in the future and whether the quality of education will be competitive. Today in Belarus there are no problems with finding jobs in medicine.

The next quote: “...If a young specialist needs to change their first job, different processes are used — redistribution or redirection”.

— Tying a person to a specific job for five years is stupid, circumstances can change radically by the appointed time. And we see an even more complex, meaningless superstructure on top of this stupidity. In many other industries, no one is forcibly “distributed” and even more so, those who are not in demand are not “redistributed”.

And most importantly, there is no evidence base behind all this. Who and for what reason decided that this system is even effective? The institution of obligatory work placement of medical graduates has existed in Belarus for decades. Name me at least one problem in healthcare that it helped to solve. Now with personnel in medicine, everything is much worse than in neighboring countries, where all this does not exist. So maybe “distribution” is not a reaction to the problem, but its cause?

I am sure that a person who graduated from a medical university has sufficient cognitive abilities to find a job. Why should they be deprived of this opportunity?

Another excerpt from the article: “Government/employer-sponsored students are confident in their future. Already upon admission, they understand in the interests of which enterprise, which organization they are studying…” And further: “Even if a graduate is married and his (her) spouse works in another city, this does not provide a 100% guarantee that he (she) will be redistributed or redirected after him (her).”

— To be confident in the future, a person must have a sense of control over their life, and not complete powerlessness. It is cynical to talk about “confidence” and literally immediately declare that the state is ready to separate young families at its own discretion.

We want to voice an effective recipe for solving the forcible work placement problem. What to do? It is very simple — it must be abolished. And that’s it! Hospitals will not close after this, students will study with greater enthusiasm, the healthcare system will instantly become more effective.

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