© MF archive.
Doctor Audrius Šimaitis, the director of Klaipėda University Hospital (KUL), visited the Faculty of Medicine of Vilnius University (VU MF). During his visit, he not only reminisced about his study years, but also observed significant changes. ‘Externally, there seem to be few changes, but internally, there is a complete transformation: from a poorly maintained building from Soviet times to a beautiful, modern, tidy facility adapted to contemporary needs, while preserving the spirit of the Faculty of Medicine that has spanned centuries’, Doctor Šimaitis shared on social media.
During his visit, he met with the dean, Professor Dalius Jatužis, and his team to discuss the possibilities of developing residency and advanced practise nursing master's degree studies at Klaipėda University.
‘I would like to talk today about what can be done to establish an independent residency training centre at Klaipėda University. I understand that I’m asking for a “piece of the pie”, which until now has been divided into only two parts. But, in my opinion, this issue is important for everyone,’ said Doctor Šimaitis. At the initiative of the guest and in consideration of the fact that currently only six residents work at Klaipėda University Hospital, while hundreds of residents are employed in the clinics of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LSMU) and Vilnius University Santaros Clinics, the possibilities and the need to offer some residency programs in Klaipėda were discussed.
Vilnius University Santaros Clinics is a highly popular location for residency studies. ‘We have recently observed an increasing number of LSMU graduates choosing to pursue residency studies in the capital. Perhaps some residency programs, especially those like family medicine or internal medicine that admit several dozen residents each year, could be divided up,’ Professor Dalius Jatužis said.
The discussion also addressed the need to implement the advanced practice nursing master’s degree program at Klaipėda University. According to Doctor Šimaitis, there is an clear shortage of nurses in hospitals, which leads to doctors performing tasks that nurses could handle. This increases the workload for doctors and results in various consequences. ‘There is currently a shortage of 2,000 nurses in Lithuania, which is a daunting number. Another institution is therefore needed to train qualified nursing specialists in the country. Healthy, positive competition promotes improvement and we can all benefit from that,’ Professor Natalja Istomina, the director of the Health Sciences Institute at VU MF, said.
From left to right in the accompanying photo: Prof Algirdas Tamošiūnas, Prof Vytautas Kasiulevičius, Prof Dalius Jatužis, Dr Audrius Šimaitis, Prof Natalja Istomina, Dr Aleksas Pikturna. © MF archive