In late June, Ungheni Medical College posted a flyer on its page carrying two large words: “Admissions 2026.” The message, aimed at graduates, is the standard fare of any promotional campaign ahead of an admissions session — white coats, smiles and an invitation to “turn passion into a profession.”
Read against the district’s figures, however, the poster says something rather less festive. In an Ungheni that is emptying of people and whose medical workforce thins year after year, this college is, in practice, the only local nursery training nurses — precisely the category that is most lacking. Here is what you can study, by when applications close and why it matters to a district with ever fewer people in white coats.
Two routes to the white coat
The college offers the nurse qualification along two tracks, depending on where a candidate has reached in their studies:
- After gymnasium (9 grades) — the “Patient Care” speciality, nurse qualification, lasting 5 years. This is the route for those entering straight after the 9th grade.
- With a baccalaureate or lyceum studies — the “Medicine” speciality, nurse qualification, lasting 3 years. This is the shorter option, for lyceum graduates.
Both lead to the same place — the right to practise as a nurse — but along roads of different length, depending on studies already completed.
What documents you need, and by when
Applications run from 20 July to 7 August, at the college’s premises on 73 Mihai Eminescu Street in Ungheni, or online, on the institution’s website, colmedun.md. Files are received Monday to Friday, from 08.00 to 14.00, with online processing of documents from 14.00 to 16.00.
The file requires the original study certificate, the identity cards of the candidate and of one parent (original and copy) and four colour photographs 3×4. Families with four or more children also add a certificate on family composition, issued by the competent bodies — the document required, according to the poster, from candidates from large families.
One thing remains, for now, outside the public documents: the 2026 admissions plan — that is, the exact number of places, budget-funded and by contract, for each speciality. At the time of writing, the dedicated page on the college’s website was not filled in. That figure is usually published together with the opening of the admissions session, and the institution’s admissions committee can confirm it at (+373 236) 22-108 and 22-359.
The figures: a district ever shorter of nurses
Here the promotional poster begins to mean more than it appears. Because the profession the college trains is exactly the one thinning out most visibly in the district.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show a steady erosion of Ungheni’s medical staff. The category statistics call mid-level medical personnel — essentially nurses, alongside midwives and laboratory staff — fell in Ungheni district from 578 people in 2014 to 484 in 2022, the last year with data at district level: 94 fewer nurses in eight years, a drop of 16 percent. Over the same period, the number of doctors fell from 171 to 145 — another 26 people fewer. Together, around 120 medical workers gone from the district in a short span.
Density remains well below the national average: about 17.7 doctors per 10,000 inhabitants in Ungheni, against 50.1 nationally in 2022 — a comparison to be read with caution, since the national figure is “inflated” by Chișinău, where the republican hospitals are concentrated.
The pressure is felt in the very institutions that ought to hire these graduates. Ungheni District Hospital is seeking, through a public recruitment notice, doctors for 25 vacant posts across 13 specialities. And the Ungheni Health Centre — the primary-care institution, distinct from the hospital — operates with 43 doctors and 160 nurses, serving more than 100,000 people from Ungheni and neighbouring districts, according to the National Health Insurance Company. Every nurse who leaves the system leaves behind a gap that is hard to fill.
The phenomenon is not only Ungheni’s, and nurses are precisely the most sought-after category. In late 2025, the National Agency for Public Health reported a shortage of more than 1,200 specialists in the medical system, in which the largest gap — 847 vacant posts — was among nurses, the system’s most understaffed profession. To this is added the ageing of the workforce: about 44% of the country’s nurses are 55 and over, according to Ministry of Health data. And the gap comes not from a small number on paper, but from posts that remain unfilled — because of departures and the concentration of staff in Chișinău.
The stake: who will care for an ageing district
Against this backdrop comes the contrast that gives weight to a simple admissions notice. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the population of Ungheni district fell from 96,292 inhabitants in 2014 to 74,507 in 2025 (preliminary data) — almost 22,000 fewer people in 11 years. A district that empties is usually also one that ages — that is, one that needs more medical care, not less, precisely when it has ever fewer people to provide it.
That is why a college training nurses right in town is no longer an administrative detail. For an Ungheni graduate of gymnasium or lyceum, a medical qualification earned at home can also mean a job at home — at the district hospital, at the health centre, or at one of the family-doctor offices in the district’s villages, all short of staff. And for the district, every cohort that stays to work in the area is a small brake on a trend that otherwise runs in a single direction.
The college has, moreover, deep roots in the town. Founded in 1945 in Bender, it came to Ungheni in the autumn of 1992, evacuated because of the conflict on the Dniester; for more than three decades it has trained medical staff here. Today it operates under the Ministry of Health and has been led, since 2015, by Valentina Țîțu.
It has been part of the local medical community beyond the classroom, too: in 2025 it was one of the teams that opened the first edition of the “Hippocrates Cup,” the women’s volleyball tournament organised in Ungheni for the Day of the Medical Worker. Now, with the 2026 admissions, it takes up its lead role again — sending out into the world people in white coats, in a district that is short of exactly them.
Information about admissions comes from the official announcement and poster of Ungheni Medical College (30 June 2026) and from the institution’s website, colmedun.md, which is also the source for the data on the college’s history and status. The figures on medical staff and population at district level are the most recent data published by the National Bureau of Statistics (medical staff: 2014–2022 series; population: 2025 preliminary data); for more recent years there is no district-level breakdown yet. The national shortage of nurses and the data on the ageing of staff come from the National Agency for Public Health and the Ministry of Health. The vacant posts at Ungheni District Hospital come from the institution’s official recruitment notice, and the data on the Ungheni Health Centre from the National Health Insurance Company. The number of places for the 2026 admissions was not public at the time of writing.