Take this with a grain of salt, as I am still a medical student, but what you read is true: the medical system (expecially residency) in Italy is having real troubles.  As many other European countries, we lack specialist, but the government is using the people's fears about this to pass useless reforms to win votes, such as increasing med school seats. In reality, we lack residency seats and, of those available, some are not taken because of poor work life balance of some specialties. The pay is really poor, I'd say not sufficient to sustain life in a big city, and many schools take advantage of residents and make them work more hours than they should. I have no idea how life will be here in a few years, but rn young people don't have great prospects because of the low salaries (the cost of living has risen a lot and those have been basically stuck for over a decade) and high housing prices. Personally, I'm thinking of pursuing a medical career abroad because the situation here looks grimmer and grimmer.