Between Cross-Collaboration and Controversy in Healthcare Delivery

Progress takes time and effort

There's been a lot of debate going on around the so-called transformation of the state general hospital into a university hospital. However, giving little to no credit to this controversy, the University of Cyprus (UCy) went public about seven new visiting professors joining their academic staff.

The team led by transitional dean Nicolaos Pavlides, oncologist at University of Ioannina, Greece, will be focusing on training and research. He also revealed in an interview that the medical university, which opened its gates in 2013, already boasts a number of twenty staff members.

Other visiting professors include Prof. Athanasia Achparaki, specialising in anaesthesiology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Prof. Miltiades Lazarides, vascular surgeon at Dimokriteio University of Thrace, Constantinos Missouris, who specialises in interventional surgery, from Frimley Health NHS Trust. Prof. Missouris is also a senior lecturer at the Imperial School of Medicine, London. Finally, the last but not the least to join the team are Prof. Georgios Panos, whose area of expertise is pathology, from the University of Patra, Evangelos Rizos, pathologist at Ioannina University Hospital, and Andreas Hadjitofis, psychiatrist at Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden.

 
The UCy's Rector Constantinos Christofides qualified the doctors' union resistance towards the university teaching hospital and the different levels of healthcare professionals it would create as anachronistic.

Prof. Christofides stressed the idea in an article published in Phileleftheros, arguing that different levels of expertise were required as patient needs were multiple and diverse, and medical care was not a one-size-fit-all service. 

Protesting physicians from Makarios Hospital caused the agreement between the government and the university to be put on hold. In their opinion, the collaborative agreement between the medical school and the ministry was irregular as it passed the cabinet but not parliamentary vote. Furthermore, the bone of contentment was the huge discrepancy between their wages and that of the medical school's dean, Dr. Zacharias Zachariou, four times higher than theirs.

Health Minister Giorgos Pamboridis reacted by saying that it was the government's obligation to ensure cooperation between the state university and public hospitals and that he would prevent any action intended to bring that to a halt.

Despite the significant discrepancies in doctors' salaries in the public sector, as the civil servants union rep pointed out to Cyprus Mail, healthcare services in Cyprus remain among the top rated in Europe. There is yet a lot to be done to reach the top of the pyramid, and the Ministry of Health has a lot in the pipeline for 2017. Progress takes time and sustained effort, starting with well-trained staff and cross-collaboration. Most importantly, the first steps have already been taken in that direction.