Called the "flying doctors," Polish general practitioners have become veritable part-time migrants who work regular night shifts here to fill a vacuum left by their British or Irish counterparts.
"All the patients in the world are the same," according to Agata Slawin, 40, a native of the southwestern Polish city of Wroclaw who spends one weekend out of two at Craigavon Hospital in the heart of Northern Ireland.
Why would Slawin, a mother of two who has her own practice in Wroclaw, fly to the other end of Europe to do night shifts at weekends?
For one thing, she said she can earn four to five times as much in Northern Ireland. By doing four shifts in two days, Slawin can go back home with a check for ?1,500 (US$2,850).
Though she has to cover her travel costs, the plane ticket between Wroclaw and Dublin only costs about ?100 thanks to budget airlines.
For another, she added, the experience itself is valuable.
"It's a great opportunity to exchange our experience, between Polish and Irish doctors," Slawin said. "Generally skill sharing between European doctors is very beneficial for patients and medicine."
To provide round-the-clock public health care, Britain's National Health Service has tried to hire enough doctors from Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales as well as from across the border in the Republic of Ireland.
With the EU acquiring new eastern European member states in May 2004, the authorities in the British province launched a campaign to hire doctors from the new member countries.
"I understand the Polish system is quite similar to ours, so it was easy for our Polish colleagues to come over and integrate well in the service we have in Northern Ireland," said Ruth Rogers, spokeswoman at the Southern Health and Social Services Board.
For two years, six "flying doctors" have provided regular consultations and a seventh is being recruited. Moreover, eight Polish doctors are now based semi-permanently in Northern Ireland. All of them have maintained their practices in Poland.
"I saw an advertisement by headhunters in the local press in Wroclaw. I had a word with my wife [who said] if you really have to go you go, but we'll wait and see what happens," said Mariusz Domanski.
For 18 months he has been spending three weeks out of four at the Daisy Hill hospital in Newry, a town bordering the Republic of Ireland, where he has been doing night shifts.
In order to learn more about Ireland, Domanski has rented a room with a Northern Irish family because his wife and four children prefer to remain behind in Poland.
"I was very afraid to see my first patient, afraid they would not understand me. But people are very polite here, much more than in Poland. I can't say I had any bad experience. " he said.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS