Ludmila Kozlova: skilled personnel should be protected

(Updating)

A few days ago the studio of Vestnik Kavkaza was visited by the Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy, a representative of the legislative body of the Smolensk Region, Lyudmila Kozlova. In a live broadcast of the program Tribune she spoke about Russian social policy and education in the field of healthcare.

First of all, she underlined that one of the tasks of the state is working on improving the quality of education. "Unfortunately, I have to point out that the overall quality of medical education keeps on worsening. There are a lot of reasons. First, the prestige of teachers in higher education has decreased because of their very low social status. The level of professors’ and teaching staff’s wages are low.  There are no social guarantees or ability to receive a flat in particular. Before this, teachers were motivated to teach students. Now they have no such motivation: neither in the clinical departments, nor in the theoretical ones. It is necessary to raise the prestige of the profession. When we say that there is no money for healthcare or education, I answer that in this case we will have sick and uneducated people," the senator said.

The healthcare sector is losing young personnel for the same reason. "Many students enter universities for their vocation, study very well, have all the qualities of the soul that a good doctor needs to have: compassion, respect for patients. But they leave this profession. Once I arrived in the region and saw that two of my former students had become neonatologists and were working with newborn children. They really wanted to become specialists in this profession, but joined the drug companies. One of them said: 'Lyudmila Vyacheslavovna, my mother is raising me, she has been teaching me since I was six years old. Now I earn five thousand rubles',’’ the deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy said.

She also drew attention to the problem of the reorganization of medical schools in order to improve the quality of teaching. "Sometimes it seems that every new leader wants to leave some trace in the history of the university and begins reforms, which are not always considered. On the other hand, we should not have opened a lot of universities, because so many professionals in the field of healthcare are not necessary."