In the daily report of covid-19 in Chile, Health Minister Jaime Mañalich assessed the Senate vote that dispatched the project enabling qualified surgeons by a foreign university to practice in the public sector, even if they do not have the approved National Single Examination of Medical Knowledge (Eunacom).
The bill was approved by the Senate by 37 votes in favor and one against (from Dr. Senator Juan Ignacio Latorre) and now the lower house will have to review the proposal.
“I want to thank the Senate very sincerely because yesterday the specialist law previously called eunacom law was first handed out, which means that doctors who are qualified by a foreign university to practice a specialty in Chile can do so without having to pay for eunacom, at least for the next two years,” Mañalich said this morning.
The minister stressed that “this vote in the Senate was practically unanimous and unanimous had been on the Senate Health Committee. This allows us to quickly recruit a significant number of specialists that we do not have today, because so far they can practice only as general practitioners under conditions that many of these people are extraordinarily qualified as anesthetists, cardiologists, intensivists and emergency doctors, which is evident in our greatest need within the pandemic period.”
The project was originally focused on allowing Health Services to hire graduate and internal medical doctors from Medicine, for two years, and then in the Senate Health Commission the Executive entered a substitute indication that Chilean and foreign doctors with specialized specialty certified by a national or foreign university, may be hired by the Health Services to work in the public system even if they have not given the examination validated by the National Corporation Autonomous Certification of Medical Specialties (Conacem).
The project is explicit that “they are exempted from that, professionals who do not accredit their university studies and who have failed this test”.
During the project vote, the senators acknowledged that the pandemic has revealed a sad reality: the lack of these professionals mainly in the public sector and in regions.
“This project does not solve the underlying problem that is the deficit of four thousand specialists in the country today, however, the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic justifies the norm,” the parliamentarians said.
