ĐỒNG NAI — The southern province of Đồng Nai is worried about the increasing number of doctors quitting jobs at public hospitals to work at private ones for better income.

Director of the province’s Department of Health Huỳnh Minh Hoàn said that brain drain negatively affected the service quality of public healthcare facilities, especially at the district level.

Last year, the department reported that 65 doctors left local public hospitals. In the first half of this year, 38 doctors of public hospitals have quit jobs. Most of the doctors are senior and experienced, and some are in management posts such as head or vice head of departments at the hospitals.

Work pressure and modest income have been blamed for the “brain drain” at Đồng Nai Province’s public hospitals, Vietnam News Agency reported.

Phạm Văn Dũng, director of Thống Nhất General Hospital, said young doctors usually chose public hospitals to work as soon as they graduated from university to accumulate experience and earn medical practice licences.

However, they did not want to work at public hospitals for long because of the high workload and pressure – a result of overcrowding at public hospitals, and more importantly, because of low salaries.

At public hospitals, on average, a new doctor earned VNĐ7-8 million (US$300-350), while skilled doctors were paid VNĐ12-20 million. Private hospitals could offer them twice as much or more.

Private hospitals were also willing to pay compensation in case the doctors required the province’s financial assistance to attend medical universities.

Director of the province’s health department Hoàn said the department planned to ask the provincial People’s Committee to increase salaries for local doctors and medical workers.

The department also asked local public hospitals to speed up autonomy and rely less on State funding so that they could offer higher salaries. — VNS