The dynamics of medical personnel of the USSR civil health care during the Great Patriotic War

The process of the change of the number of Soviet health care personnel and the factors influencing them were considered. By means of the analysis of statistical materials taken from the documents of the central archives an attempt to assess the situation which developed with staffing of the USSR was made. It was noted that after recession of number of the medical personnel in 1941 caused by mobilization in army process of its active growth which allowed coming by the end of war to the level close to pre-war time. The influence of evacuation processes on territorial redistribution of physicians in the years of war was revealed: considerable reduction of their number in the western regions of the USSR and increase due to this quantity of medical staff in the east of the USSR. The dynamics of the number of the doctors in the section of city and rural medicine was considered. The change in the number of the personnel in various types of medical institutions was analyzed. It was shown that with serious absolute growth their ratio remained invariable. The data on the condition of the staff of the freed territories, their dynamics in the years of war were provided. Thus, the war became the time of sharp and large-scale changes in the number of medical staff of civil health care. If in the first months of the war the movement of the personnel was defined first of all by mass mobilization of physicians in army, in the subsequent the great influence had territorial redistribution of the medical personnel in the years of war. If rear areas at the expense of the evacuated physicians managed to improve considerably the personnel situation, after release of occupied territories the Soviet health care appeared before actually insoluble problem: the condition of health care of the western regions of the USSR was terrifying, and the resources for its staffing were catastrophically not enough. The measures undertaken by the government in the years of the war allowed holding the system from crash, but only the demobilization of the doctors from the army finally allowed resolving it. If in 1945 in the RSFSR there were 66 930 doctors, in 1946 only according to preliminary data their quantity grew up to 83 359.