Medical Residents’ Compensation: Claims for Unpaid Training Grants and Damages

The day of graduation is one of the most beautiful for a man. It generally arrives before other happy days, such as that of marriage or the birth of a child, and is then remembered with a particular emotion.

The shiny eyes of the relatives, then, betray the emotion that fulfills the hearts of all the loved ones of the recent graduate.

Let's go back in time to the early Eighties. A boy from Rome comes to the conclusion of his studies in a brilliant way. He collected one success after another in the exams, and let’s say that he had not chosen an easy faculty, indeed.

He had enrolled in Medicine, one of the longest and most difficult faculties in the Italian university scene. At least, unlike other faculties, medicine helps to guarantee a good chance of employment once the studies are finished, although the path to becoming an experienced doctor is very challenging.

He knows that the long practice of specialization awaits him, and that for a few years he will not yet be economically self-sufficient and will have to rely on his parents. It is a sacrifice for the family that already supported him during university, but for a son who graduated in medicine, with the prospect of becoming a doctor and saving lives, this is done and more.

He has already chosen which specialization to devote to, and the family is already estimating the cost of this journey when he learns the good news. The European Union, which at that time was still called theEuropean Community, decided that individual States should provide fair compensation fordoctors during their medical school.

Specialization was not used to be refunded

It doesn't seem true to the young doctor and his family. In Italy there are still few graduates, and therefore the law provisions supporting university studies are still scarce. Now, for example, less wealthy students can count on scholarships and specific funding. They can also work and study at the same time, because working students have facilities with their study plan.

But thirty years ago things were different. It was necessary to rely on family savings and often parents worked hard to get their children to study.

The children, for their part, knew that for the duration of the university there would be more renunciation thansatisfaction, especially if the faculties were far from their country of origin and it was necessary to find accommodation outside the home.

So, with the prospect of an adequate refund, the boy commits to some expenses for which he is convinced that he will soon find coverage. The State has decided that it will provide twenty-one million lire per year for each student.

He decides to rent a nice apartment a few steps from the hospital, to be always ready in case of availability. Buy here and there items that he will exhibit once free to walk the aisle of the Hospital, and that will distinguish him as a high-class doctor: I will soon be able to pay, he says, I wait at any moment for the money of the State.

Safe money, you'll think. It is a pity that the State takes more than ten years to implement the European Directive and all the doctors who attended graduate school in the decade of the 1980s have not seen any money, since all the funds have been provided to doctors enrolled in graduate schools since the 1990s.

The European Union changes the rules

Theboy looks forward to the money he deserves. He devotes many hours a day to preparing on the books and in the department, to ensure maximum competence when it will be time to cure disease for real.

But money does not arrive and his family, now tried financially, is forced to make unpleasant sacrifices in order to guarantee the formation of the promising son.

Parents get older, and they would have liked to enjoy the late age in peace. The hope that his son would finally hold himself had brought them to a sigh of relief.

The thought of becoming grandparents soon is getting closer: the position of their boy would make him much desired in the eyes of women, and he would not be long in finding love and building a family of his own, now that he could afford it.

The Young Medical Graduate and the Right to Compensation from the State

Time passes, and the boy ends his specialization without ever having seen a penny from the State. The European directive was implemented too late and the money went directly into the pockets of younger graduates.

He is now an established doctor, and the work in the hospital guarantees him good financial support, but he does not see why give up what should have been of his own.

If he could get the promised money back, he would immediately return it to his parents, now really old, to cheer their old age as much as possible and show the gratitude that has always accompanied him.

Great work for the lawyers of the medical association

Getting justice was not easy at all. It was necessary to rely on an Association for the Protection of Medical Professions,which studied the case well and collected the complaints of other doctors who suffered the samefate.

In total, 500 doctors who attended graduate school showed up in the offices of lawyers during the 1980s.

It took all the experience and meticulousness of the lawyers, struggling with quibbles and testimonies, to reconstruct the facts and quantify the damage suffered by young doctors.

Once the case study was completed, the lawyers dragged the Italian State to the Court of Rome.

unpaid medical residency grants

The Italian State has defended itself by contesting the appeals brought against it, but each time the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Economy and Finance have been condemned to pay compensation,which for individual doctors has reached up to more than one hundred thousand euros considering the amount of expenses incurred and interest.

In addition to the judgments handed down for the individual case, the Court of Romeissued a final decision concerning 500 doctors who appealed to the consumer association. To them, the Tribunal ruled in July 2019 a due compensation of a grand amount of fourteen million euros, divided for each doctor who has applied for the Court.

For all others, there is a bill proposed in Parliament that provides for thereimbursement of a lump sum for each year of sustained specialization.

Another case of poorly paid scholarships

There is a second litigation brought by those who attended graduate school between 1994 and 2006. In this case, the grant was paid but net of large sums such as social security costs and insurance coverage of occupational risks and accidents. A backlog for the state would amount to more than four billion euros.