ZAČECI I RAZVOJ MEDICINSKIH ŠKOLA U RIJECI

Abstract

This review of medical education in Rijeka, other than for physicians , opens with a brief account about the first midwifery school in Croatia, established in Rijeka in 1786, but whose life was rather short. In the absence of a medical school proper in the 19 th cen- tury, a limited medical training for nurses was organised by the nuns of the order of St. Vincent de Paul who arrived in Rijeka in 1858. After WWI they started the first nursing school in the Hospital of the Holy Ghost, restricted at the beginning for the order, and later enrolling all girls. The school was closed in 1947, but the increasing needs soon started a boom of medical schools in Rijeka in the 60 years that followed, producing a number of different professions: midwives at first, then nurses, laboratory analysts, physiotherapists, and technicians in dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary medicine. School programmes gradually increased from two to four-year at the secondary level and to two to three-year at the university level.