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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
For a student to become a doctor, they must spend at least 50% of instructional hours in clinical subjects at the patient’s bedside or in a simulation center. That’s what the educational standard requires.
So clinical subjects should be taught by practicing physicians.
“But when we look into the teaching staff of clinical departments, we often see that heads of departments and lecturers may either not be practitioners at all, or they have the right to practice but do not practice and haven’t seen a patient for years,” says Olena Nykonchuk, director of the Center for Education Quality at the Ministry of Health.
And in a training center for future rehabilitation specialists, instead of a wheelchair there might be a stool with casters. This case is told by Olena Yeremenko, deputy head of the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance.
How do you train a specialist without equipment? How can an occupational therapist teach a person after surgery or stroke to do self-care when the training environment doesn’t even have a properly equipped kitchen?
Training classroom of ZDMFU
Medical education in Ukraine is, on the one hand, overregulated, and on the other — in some areas a “wild field.” We don’t even have good consolidated data on the quality of medical education. Yet this is the foundation of the whole medical system: how a doctor was trained affects timely diagnosis, treatment, and a person’s quality of life.
So it’s no surprise that Minister of Health Viktor Liashko stated: university hospitals and the requirement about 5000 students will sooner or later become mandatory for medical education in Ukraine.
LB.ua has heard for years from subject-matter experts about the need to reduce the number of places where medics are trained. And about the need to train them well. One independent IFOM test showed for six years a “pit” in the quality of training of future doctors in Ukraine. Although due to widespread violations its results were not officially recognized, the average percentage of correct answers by Ukrainian third-year students was 30,24% (the international comparison group on average scores this exam at 54%).
So should we expect a reduction of medical universities and faculties in classical universities that also prepare future medics? And will that help improve the quality of those who will later treat us? We explore these questions with experts in the special project “This Is Medicine,” which LB.ua is implementing with the Lviv National Medical University.
Medical students acquire practical skills
Who and where trains medics in Ukraine
According to the Unified State Education Database (EDEBO), as of 1 January 2026, institutions that offer medical specialties educate about 70 000 students.
About 60% of them are in Ministry of Health universities, says Olena Yeremenko, deputy director of the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance.
EDKI data show how many medical students “survived” to the third year to take the KROK 1 exam. According to that, Ukraine trains medics in 82 institutions:
• 15 medical institutions under the Ministry of Health;
• 37 medical faculties or institutes within classical or polytechnic universities — overseen by the Ministry of Education and Science;
• about 25 private ones — both purely medical and classical universities with medical faculties;
• several municipal institutions.
The most dispersed specialties today are therapy and rehabilitation, pharmacy, and medicine, says Olena Nykonchuk.
Seven Ministry of Health institutions train rehabilitation specialists, 19 are under the Ministry of Education and 11 are private. A similar situation exists in pharmacy: pharmacists are even taught at a university of technologies and design and at polytechnics.
At the same time there are 117 institutions of professional pre-higher education. Classically they trained nurses. But, Nykonchuk explains, some of them become academies and obtain a license to train in doctor specialties — like Cherkasy and Rivne medical academies.
There are also those that have just received a license and are only about to start enrolling students, and those that have a license but are not recruiting. So the figure is dynamic.
There are many training places. The question is — are there as many students?
How many medical students and where they are
The numbers are telling: over four years of full-scale war, the number of third-year students in Ministry of Health medical universities in the specialty “medicine” has fallen almost by half.
“Pharmacy and dentistry remained stable, but this number fluctuated in non–Ministry of Health universities from 150 to 200 people per specialty each of the five years. 200 people from 37 faculties. That’s on average 20 students,” Nykonchuk says. “If we dig deeper into private institutions — the same trend. If 2000 third-year pharmacy students are dispersed across 20 institutions while there is a separate pharmaceutical university under the Ministry of Health, does such training make sense? And what is the training like at those institutions?”
Now the number of medical applicants is not decreasing; there’s a relative plateau — about 7–8 thousand per year.
Can quality be measured at all
There is currently no data you can reliably base conclusions on.
You can’t assess education quality by KROK results or student numbers, says Olena Nykonchuk: “It’s important to look overall at an institution’s capacity to combine education, science, and practice so as to be in demand and prepare a competitive specialist.”
Does that mean a larger university equals better education? Not always. Can you clearly divide institutions into good and bad? Also no.
Yeremenko heads the medicine direction at NAQA. She says: “From Uzhhorod to Kharkiv, we understand there are effective and ineffective programs. There are institutions where some programs are excellent and others are terrible.”
Olena Yeremenko, deputy head of the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance, on an official visit to Zaporizhzhia State Medical and Pharmaceutical University
New equipment doesn’t always save the situation. There can be top-notch material and technical resources that, Yeremenko adds, “a person’s hand hasn’t touched”: “No button is scratched. No inlet for intravenous injection even has a mark. Whereas in another institution — the phantoms are ragged, scratched; clearly people are learning there. One well-known faculty in the Ministry of Health system did not receive normal accreditation in the physical rehabilitation program at one time, because they have equipment for physical rehabilitation but a student’s foot had never set on it.”
If this is imitation training, why not simply close such programs? Because it’s politics. Only the university itself can close an educational program. NAQA can refuse accreditation. But then there will be problems for students who will not be issued a document about their education. They protest demanding to be allowed to finish. And the programs are extended. Over all the years of NAQA’s work it has refused accreditation in the specialty “Medicine” only 9 times.
What to orient to? Yeremenko observes that institutions that took up their own simulation centers early and are active in various projects win out: “And — when it wasn’t fashionable — they knew they had to make the practical component powerful and work with university clinics.”
Is reduction needed
Short answer — yes.
Rector of Lviv National Medical University Orest Chemeris
Student numbers are falling, especially noticeably in the last four years, says LNMU Rector Orest Chemeris: “The demographic situation is worsening: the population is shrinking. But our institution has a slightly different situation. This is caused by several conditions, including security and reputational ones. LNMU has always remained one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in Ukraine. For 2022–2025 years our number of applicants was consistently large, and this year, as in the country overall, it increased — by about 20%. If last year, for example, we had 830 first-year students, this September nearly a thousand new students will enter the lecture halls.”
When limited resources are dispersed — quality can fall. Also, decisions about consolidation may be driven by the need to save funds, adds Rector Orest Chemeris.
Simulation training is the most expensive. “Regardless of the number of students, the base must meet standards. Some things are extremely resource-intensive, for example simulation training. It’s costly, and then the question arises about the efficiency of using one manikin. If 100 people are trained on a manikin and we hypothetically invested 100 hryvnias in it, that’s one hryvnia per student. But if 10 people are trained, then the training becomes 10 times more expensive,” explains Yurii Kuchyn, rector of Bohomolets National Medical University.
Rector Yurii Kuchyn
Minister of Health Viktor Liashko confirms this point to LB.ua: “When a simulation center is for 10 students, we will always be told that the state resource per student is small.”
And the infrastructure itself costs the same regardless of student numbers. “Administrative costs do not depend on how many students study — 20, 200 or 2000. There are basic things that must be provided at least for a license. Reducing the number of institutions will contribute to concentrating resources that are now limited in the public sector,” adds Kuchyn.
Therefore consolidation of universities can contribute to improving education quality, continues Orest Chemeris: “At the same time, such processes must take into account the institution’s material and technical base, staffing potential, and availability of clinical bases.”
How exactly: three models
Does every institution need its own university hospital? No, Nykonchuk explains. There are options.
First — its own university hospital, as in Lviv, where students gradually learn practice alongside theory.
Olena Nykonchuk, CEO of the Center for Education Quality at the Ministry of Health
“In our vision a strong medical university will have 5000 students plus a university hospital. Several of the 15 Ministry of Health education institutions do not reach this paradigm. But 50+ others [other institutions that train doctors] fall even further short,” Nykonchuk says.
Minister Viktor Liashko, in a conversation with LB.ua, continues to explain this vision using the experimental university hospital project at Lviv National Medical University as an example: “What does this give? The practice that has formed in other universities: there is a surgery faculty and there is a surgery department. De facto it often happens that the head of the department is not an operating surgeon, or has long left practice, and the technologies they teach differ from those applied in the institution that is the clinical base. Our task is to combine them. So that those who operate teach at the same time.”
The second option for institutions that train future medics is cooperation with a multidisciplinary clinic, which will provide at least 80% of clinical skills.
The third — monoprofessional clinical bases for directions not covered by the university hospital.
“They cannot be dispersed as they are now,” Nykonchuk adds.
The main thing is guaranteed access to training.
“Even if an institution doesn’t have its own MRI machine to train on, access for training must be ensured. And in what way — by purchase, operation in its university hospital, or by contract with a medical facility — is another question,” says Kuchyn.
Practical session of students from Bohomolets National Medical University at the Kyiv City Clinical Oncology Center
Will there actually be a reduction
In the future — yes, but the path will be difficult. Currently the license for educational activity is issued by the Ministry of Education and Science, and its requirements are easy to meet, says Nykonchuk. Revoking a license is a completely different conversation. So these will be more “dances” not around closures, but around mergers and consolidations of institutions. Likely they will consider: how many students already study where, which institutions have stronger material and technical bases, what clinical bases exist, and who exactly teaches.
What does the Ministry of Education and Science say about potential reductions? LB.ua was told there that, together with the Ministry of Health, they will work out a joint position. By the end of 2027 they plan to approve the Features of Licensing of Regulated Specialties, which will enshrine stricter requirements for institutions that train medics, “taking into account European directives and national requirements.” And after the new Euro-standards and recommendations for quality assurance in higher education are approved (approximately at the end of 2027) they will update and strengthen accreditation requirements.
“We don’t care about the sphere of subordination. If an institution is institutionally capable of combining the three components — education, science and practice — great. The number of students alone is not an indicator of quality — the determining factor is their level of training,” Olena Nykonchuk sums up.
Clinical production practice in pediatric dentistry for students of Zaporizhzhia State Medical and Pharmaceutical University in the specialty 'Dentistry'
What does the Minister of Health say about potential reductions?
In a conversation with LB.ua Minister Viktor Liashko confirmed that a reduction in places to train future medics is planned, “but not a reduction in state-funded places.”
“This month we will have a big meeting with all the rectors of medical faculties. We must talk about the role of education in the healthcare system 2035–2040. Because if we today don’t look at needs for that time, we’re worthless as managers. Maybe it’s better to have fewer medical universities, but increase the number of state-funded spots at those that remain, raise the number of teaching staff to give quality education. And in parallel the issue of medical faculties at classical universities, which are also very numerous, will be resolved,” he said.
Viktor Liashko, Minister of Health of Ukraine
According to Viktor Liashko, 5 000 students in one institution allows a university to be maintained and to implement new technologies. But those do not have to be all 5000 medics. They can be different faculties.
“Universities that live only in the present and do not seek potential students outside our country themselves degrade,” Viktor Liashko continues. “Do they expect the minister to bring them students? That shouldn’t be. If you demanded financial autonomy, economic autonomy, if the minister cannot intervene in rector elections, cannot appoint a rector, then show results. Look at the Czech Republic. They went through a similar stage. After that they decided to attract foreign students to education. And so they replenished their personnel reserves. If you look at the United Kingdom, which we used as a model when reforming, only 30% of doctors were educated in the UK. 70% came from EU countries and outside the EU. I will have a tough conversation with the rectors. After that I’m ready to go to Serhii Babak and Mykhailo Radutskyi and propose certain changes.”
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