What to do when the academic medical profession is constantly being drawn to metropolitan areas and one medical practice after the other is closing down in the countryside? In Bavaria, people have become creative in this regard in recent years. The idea: students first learn anatomy, biochemistry and histology at an established medical school; with the physics degree in their pockets, they then switch to a clinic outside the big cities in order to go through what is known as clinical training there and then – so it is hoped – to stay in the region.
“Medical campus” is the magic word, and above all it means the partnership of various institutions, less a university campus. The “Medical Campus Upper Franconia” (MCO) has now officially started for Upper Franconia with the Friedrich-Alexander-University (FAU), the University and the Clinic Bayreuth as well as the University Clinic Erlangen. 55 students on the Human Medicine Erlangen-Nuremberg/Bayreuth course who are enrolled at FAU moved to Bayreuth on April 1 to study in a clinic.
The MCO has been in the works in Upper Franconia since 2017, when a “task force” received the planning order, in 2019 the decision of the state government followed, two years later the topping-out ceremony for a teaching building at the Bayreuth Clinic, which is now standing, was celebrated with two more should follow. A total of 400 students are expected in Bayreuth by 2026 – and they need space. Cost point: 36 million euros annually once the entire project is up and running.
Chance for Bayreuth – but doubts remain
For Bayreuth, this is an opportunity to get rid of some of the doubts that have arisen in the past: do the structures fit in with a university clinic like that in Erlangen? Can the Bayreuth doctors teach? In short: Can the clinic also be a university clinic? When the assembled university presidents and clinic managing directors signed the contracts for the MCO in 2019 in the presence of the then Science Minister Bernd Sibler, not all doubts were dispelled.
Finally, there was a lack of money. The summer semester has already started; Lectures are scheduled to begin in May, but by no means all of the planned lecturers are ready. MCO circles say that some chief physicians who have been appointed professors at the university are dissatisfied with the planned remuneration. In addition to their hospital salary, they are to receive a professorship salary that is set throughout Bavaria – but at the same time the Bayreuth hospital apparently wants to cut the chief physician’s salary.
Doctors want more money
There is talk of “adjustments” because a double job now means “postponements”, i.e. less time for the chief doctor’s work, says a hospital spokesman. Individual doctors are now considering not taking up the professorship. They argue that there is an additional burden that needs to be remunerated. And time is pressing, the courses have to be prepared. A hospital spokesman said they were “very confident” that they would soon come to an agreement and make “attractive offers”.
The spokesman also does not see the danger that courses could be canceled: It is normal for professorships to be filled gradually. If this is not possible by May, a relevant subject representative at FAU will inform you. Is it all just the pain of childbirth of a project that wants to combine the theoretical university world with the applied practice of a regional hospital? The clinic is self-confident and speaks of teaching “at a high level”.
How operations in Franconia are now starting up is also being observed in Lower Bavaria. The Council of Ministers decided that a medical campus should also be built there to counteract the impending undersupply. And there, too, the project is not without controversy: External experts had not predicted a rosy future for the initiative. It will only be seen in many years whether the new medical locations will actually bring more doctors to the regions.