Turkish medicinal research assistants unhappy about being unable to work with academics

Gülseven Özkan – ANKARA

Turkey’s Higher Education Board (YÖK) released a report revealing the working conditions of research assistants at the universities’ medical faculties, indicating that 15.4 percent of the assistants “almost never” work with academics, whereas 3.9 percent “never” work with academics.

The YÖK prepared the report based on findings from its “workshop on assistant training in the medical field.” The report evaluated the surveys conducted with 1,145 research assistants doing their medical residency training and reported the young doctors’ problems. Of those research assistants, 82.6 percent were chosen from university hospitals, whereas the rest were chosen from training and research hospitals. Of the interviewees, 57.6 percent belonged to the internal residency program, 32.2 percent belonged to surgery, and 10 belonged to basic medicine.

According to the report results, 34.3 percent of residents work with academics every day and 64.9 percent of residents allocate one to five hours for academic and scientific studies a week, but 88.3 percent wish they could have allocated more time, as they believe “it is not enough.”

Some 26 percent of the interviewees find their hospitals “very insufficient” in terms of the level of academic and scientific activities, whereas 5.2 percent find them “very sufficient.” Some 67 percent say “there are many things I am not pleased about” and “I am not pleased at all,” when asked about how happy they are with their current lives, whereas 2.4 percent are “completely happy” with their lives.