The lack of doctors in the province of Alicante is having a big effect on health areas that don’t get enough care, such Torrevieja, Dénia, Orihuela, and Elda. Some of these places are on the shore and are popular with tourists. The Vinalopó region has a lot of people living there. According to the 2024 Management Report of the Regional Ministry of Health, these districts have a total assigned population of about 790,000 persons, which includes patients with SIP health cards. This number may change because the population is always changing. In other words, the medical personnel needs to be strengthened so that they can care for a quarter of the people who live in the Alicante area.
These four health agencies require at least 600 doctors right away. The Valencian regional government (Generalitat) has started a competitive selection process to fill these positions. This means that people can become civil servants without having to take an exam or pass a competitive exam. Seven out of ten jobs are in hospitals. The other three are at health centers, as support workers, or family planning clinics. There are 181 available positions for doctors at the Torrevieja health department. There are 166 doctor jobs that need to be filled in Orihuela, 161 in Elda, and 89 in Dénia. The Health Department is also hiring 80 nurses in all four health districts.
The Official Gazette of the Valencian Government has published a detailed job offer for professionals in Health Sciences. The posts are hard to fill in the public healthcare system. There are 831 open positions, some of which are in the health department in Vinaròs in Castellón and in the Xàtiva-Ontinyent, Requena, and Ademuz health districts in Valencia. The province of Alicante, on the other hand, has the most jobs available, with 72% of them.
The Ministry of Health says that this increase in staff “will significantly strengthen services in key areas” and make sure that healthcare is “more equitable, accessible, and high-quality.” The department said that adding more professionals will assist “stabilise services that have historically been hard to staff, improve healthcare capacity, and build more stable teams.”
Torrevieja
The goal of the selection process is to hire 188 permanent staff members for the Torrevieja health department, including 181 doctors and 7 nurses. There are 127 doctor jobs available at the Torrevieja University Hospital and 54 more for primary care doctors in the health centres and clinics of a department that serves a population of 217,934 people in Torrevieja, Orihuela Costa, Pilar de la Horadada, Guardamar, Rojales, San Fulgencio, San Miguel de Salinas, Los Montesinos, Benijófar, and Formentera del Segura.
Hard-to-fill posts are those that are hard to fill because there aren’t many people who want them. These positions are often found at district hospitals or in places of the Valencian Community that are hard to get to, or in areas outside of big cities like Alicante and Elche, which are more appealing to doctors. The Health Service still hires trained and credentialed doctors from other nations without specialised training in fields like Emergency Medicine, Primary Care, and Paediatrics.
Orihuela
To improve healthcare services, the Orihuela Health Department is hiring 166 new doctors and 34 more nurses, for a total of 200. The goal is to ensure that everyone gets comprehensive, fair, and high-quality care.
There are 129 openings at Vega Baja Hospital and 71 for Primary Care. There are 21 new job openings in Emergency Medicine, 15 in Psychology, 11 in Psychiatry, 11 in Anaesthesiology, seven in Internal Medicine, three in Dermatology, and three in Radiology. There are also 18 open paediatrician jobs at different health centres, such as those in Almoradí, Bigastro, Callosa de Segura, Dolores, and Orihuela 1.
At the end of 2024, there were a lot of complaints from patients because the department had no dermatologists left. Also, because there weren’t enough radiologists, on-call shifts at the Vega Baja Hospital weren’t filled, and tests ordered by emergency room doctors or internists were being done remotely, or patients were being sent to other hospitals.
Making food
The Elda health department will have 179 of the vacancies in the new call for expert statutory workers that are hard to fill. There are 97 places available in various specialities, such as Pathological Anatomy (1), Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation (9), Digestive System (3), Cardiology (1), General and Digestive System Surgery (3), Orthopaedic and Traumatological Surgery (2), Endocrinology and Nutrition (1), Hospital Pharmacy (4), Haematology and Hemotherapy (3), Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (3), Intensive Care Medicine (2), Internal Medicine (8), Preventive Medicine and Public Health (1), Microbiology and Parasitology (2), Nephrology (3), Neurology (1), Obstetrics and Gynaecology (2), Ophthalmology (5), Medical Oncology (5), Otorhinolaryngology (2), Paediatrics (3), Clinical Psychology (16), Psychiatry (10), Radiodiagnosis (3), and Rheumatology (2).
There are 57 jobs open in the Family and Community Medicine speciality. There is one for Family Planning, one for Addictive Behaviours, two for the Home Hospitalisation Unit, 19 for Hospital Emergency Departments, and 34 for Primary Care. There are 12 Primary Care jobs in Marina Española (Elda), 3 in Monóvar, 4 in Novelda, 5 in Petrer, 5 in Pinoso, and 5 in Villena. There are also 9 opportunities in Primary Care Paediatrics, 5 in Family and Community Nursing, 2 for Midwives (for the centres in Villena and Novelda), and 11 for Mental Health Nursing.
Denia
The Dénia health department will get 110 of these jobs, 89 for doctors and 21 for nurses. This will make its personnel more stronger. These jobs are for important fields including Family and Community Medicine, Primary Care Paediatrics, Family and Community Nursing, Obstetric and Gynaecological Nursing, and Mental Health Nursing.
Family medicine and mental health are the two fields with the greatest job openings.
Family and Community Medicine has the most openings in the merit-based selection procedure, with 186. Emergency Medicine comes next, with 99. This means that the Emergency Departments in these four hospitals don’t have enough staff. Torrevieja Hospital requires 26 doctors, Orihuela Hospital needs 21, Elda Hospital needs 19, and Dénia Hospital needs 16.
For mental health, which they also want to improve, they need 16 clinical psychologists and 10 psychiatrists for the Elda health department, 12 and 9 for the Dénia department, 15 and 11 for Orihuela, and 10 and 9 for Torrevieja, in that order.
There are 2,619 doctors taking part in the process across the Community, and certain specialities have more than 100 applicants for each seat.
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