"I started the course in 2021, and also attended practical internships, then the announcement came out asking us if we wanted to take ownership in the territory, to try to make up for the serious shortage of general practitioners, and I and other colleagues accepted . It seemed right to do so. There is a national law, born with Covid and then extended, which establishes that all working hours are equivalent to the internship . It was an essential condition for accepting, obviously, I spent money to start a practice in Quartu, and today I have a thousand patients in my care. When there were five months left to the end of the course, last February, the path to obtain the diploma was specified by the department, they changed the rules on the table, and essentially I was told that I would have to do a four-month internship at the practice of a colleague who does exactly what I have done so far. For me four months, but for others even eight. Madness".

This is the testimony of Marco Meloni , who, together with several dozen of his colleagues, was denied the possibility of obtaining the final diploma in general medicine, in recent days, because he did not have enough hours of internship, despite having agreed to open a clinic in a vacant location , a commitment and sacrifice that should have been considered an internship in all respects, but which instead were not recognized by the regional health department.

There is an urgent question on the matter from the regional councilor of the Reformers Umberto Ticca (together with his colleagues Giuseppe Fasolino and Aldo Salaris) who has made himself the spokesperson of the anger of these doctors, "mocked" because of "an incomprehensible decision", and what's more when on the Island there are 450 thousand people without basic assistance.

Ticca asks the President of the Region and the Health Councilor for explanations. "The same specialists who were called, both during Covid and after, to plug the holes in the health system with the promise of being able to specialize and work at the same time, are now being asked to leave their offices and their patients to devote themselves to professional training (after having worked alone for 2 years). The bureaucratic rigidity of the department not only slows down the training of doctors who are essential for the future of healthcare, but is in clear contradiction with the objectives declared by the Region"