Non-medical universities with permissions to create medical faculties

Future paramedics and nurses are being educated at the medical simulation center in Siedlce. From October, medical students are to join them, because the Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities has just received permission from the Minister of Education to launch a medical course.

– We are a public university, these are full-time studies, and therefore free of charge – informs the spokesperson of the University of Natural Sciences and Humanities in Siedlce, Dr. Beata Gałek.

Recruitment starts in May, there are 60 places. The university is to cooperate with two hospitals in Siedlce, where students will learn medicine in practice. The university says that the launch of the medical faculty involved some investments, which were partly covered by ministerial subsidies.

– We have built a medical simulation center, a dissecting room, i.e. a normal anatomy laboratory. Investments that are dedicated to the future medical faculty amount to over PLN 20 million – points out Dr. Beata Gałek.

It is less comfortable in Elbląg, because the dissecting room has not yet been established. The medical faculty was launched here in October last year. – Students must have contact with the autopsy room, with the corpse. We currently use the Collegium Medicum of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in Bydgoszcz – explains the dean of the medical faculty of the Academy of Medical and Social Sciences in Elbląg, Jacek Perliński, MD, PhD.

It is over 200 kilometers of road. – We are constantly receiving information about universities that educate students, teaching anatomy from PowerPoint presentations – says the president of the Supreme Medical Council, Łukasz Jankowski. – Not having their own anatomy, they put students on a bus and drive them several hundred kilometers to distant centers to educate themselves – he adds.

The university in Elbląg was visited by the Minister of Education and Science on Thursday. He promised a support program for universities that open medical faculties. – It is known that allocating funds for such investments as a dissecting room is a huge task that is difficult to cope with – he says Przemyslaw Czarnek.

According to the minister, there is a shortage of up to 60,000 doctors in the system. Hence the idea that future doctors should also study at non-medical universities, often located in smaller cities. Education in the field of medicine and medicine and dentistry is currently provided by 24 universities – 19 public and 5 private. Several more universities will join after the summer holidays.

– We do it so that the quality of health services provided is at a higher level, because nothing works as well on every social, professional and economic level as healthy competition – points out Przemysław Czarnek.

A different opinion is expressed by the medical self-government, which is concerned about the quality of education offered in new faculties. – Quality has been lost in favor of quantity. The whole society has the right to ask today what doctors will treat us in six or seven years’ time, says Łukasz Jankowski.

It is still not known exactly what the support program for universities that open a medical course should look like. Details will be available soon. – Certain decisions will be made in the next week, therefore I am asking all believers to pray – says Minister Czarnek.