Over 7,000 Job Openings for Medical Specialists Remain Unfilled

IMSS’s Director General Zoé Robledo reported that 10,920 doctors applied to the 14,323 job openings to recruit medical specialists. Of the open job postings, 6,963 received at least one applicant but 7,360 open positions did not receive any applications. This national recruitment call was launched after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced a controversial decision to hire Cuban doctors to cover a shortage of general practitioners.

“This is an unprecedented effort where all health institutions in the country published all their vacancies in the same platform,” said Robledo.

During a morning press conference, the Ministry of Health informed that there were 1,933 vacancies with one postulation, 870 with two and 561 with three. Over 1,600 job openings had four or more postulations. The National Institutes of Health covered 92.6 percent of its openings, followed by PEMEX with a coverage of 83.6 percent of its vacancies and the INSABI with 53.1 percent. ISSSTE and IMSS-Bienestar had the lowest response, with 17.3 percent and 28.9 percent respectively.

About 73 percent of the doctors who applied are between 30 and 39 years old and 14 percent are between 40 and 49 years old. There were a total of 5,626 male doctors registered and 5,294 female doctors.

The national call searched for doctors in about 95 medical specialties, but 63 percent of open positions focused on five. Only 22 percent of the internal medicine openings were filled, while surgical emergencies covered 30 percent of its open vacancies, gynecology and obstetrics 71 percent and general surgery 61 percent. Anesthesiology, on the other hand, received 112 percent of applicants. Family medicine, pediatric nephrology and quality of the medical attention also had more candidates than offerings.  

While Jalisco, Guanajuato, Queretaro, Nuevo Leon, Aguascalientes and Mexico City had more candidates than openings, Chiapas Veracruz, Guerrero, Nayarit, Durango, Chihuahua, Sonora and Oaxaca had many unfilled vacancies. A total of 3,287 vacancies received no applicants, most of those are in locations with a population of less than 200,000 habitants. Also, 1,223 vacancies that remained without applicants are in localities with a higher level of poverty than the national average. Moreover, 585 vacancies without candidates are in indigenous localities and 764 in areas with a social lag. To cover these vacancies, the government is offering to increase the salary of doctors by 10-50 percent.

Robledo said that applicants will receive a confirmation email with instructions to present their documents for the selection processes.