Europe | Romanian doctor training

Romania is now a magnet for the world’s medical students

But Romanian doctors are leaving

Students during a lesson at the Medicine and Pharmacy University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Photograph: Reuters

After struggling to land a place on a medicine course in France, Louise Louvet reluctantly heeded a friend’s advice: give Romania a chance. “I thought there was no way in hell I’d move there,” she says, now a sixth-year medical student at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca. A visit to the campus had quickly changed her mind. Crowds of international students and the school’s focus on practical care and teaching offered a welcome contrast to the dour rote-learning she had experienced in France. “After that, I said let’s do it.”

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Pluses and minuses”

From the July 20th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

Miners work underground near the city of Pokrovsk, Ukraine.

Why Russia is trying to seize a vital Ukrainian coal mine

Without it, the country’s remaining steel industry will be crippled

The search for Ukraine’s missing soldiers and sailors

The families of missing loved ones are trying to find them, alive or dead


A big truck emblazoned with the US flag on the side and the words MAGA above the cab (which resembles Donald Trump's face) flies over the brow of a hill. A startled deer is caught in the headlights

Europe could become Trump’s geopolitical roadkill

A second dose of MAGA will put the EU in a pickle


Russia continues to advance in eastern Ukraine

But it is encountering growing problems

Turkey’s long hard struggle with inflation

High interest rates are starting to do the trick

Delays on Italy’s spruced-up trains have got worse

Matteo Salvini is making feeble excuses