Solange Fugger, Italy's youngest primary school teacher and the queen of TikTok

At 36, Solange Fugger is Italy's youngest primary care physician. She's been running a Roman emergency room for two weeks, but prefers not to share details about where she works so as not to find followers on the ward. With her TikTok account ("Minerva Salute"), boasting over 330,000 followers and 6 million likes, she's also a social media star.

The studies

From payroll worker to medical director, Fugger specialized at La Sapienza University of Rome in 2019 with a thesis in emergency medicine. Inspired by the large statue of Minerva that dominates the façade of the Roman university, in 2024 she decided to launch her own social media profile, @minervasalute, which has over 300,000 followers on TikTok.

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Subsequently, he decided to publish short scientific videos, in which he presents anonymous clinical cases.

This young woman has become so popular online, a TikTok phenomenon. She conveys her love and passion for her craft.

She explains symptoms and diagnoses very clearly, a useful tool for the many students who follow her.

Hers is a tale of a complicated profession, from emergency interventions to "Doctor House"-style diagnoses. She decided to open a TikTok profile specifically to describe to young doctors her days in the emergency room and a specialization that is daunting for those new to the profession.

Indeed, it has become increasingly difficult to find doctors willing to choose this field. For years, emergency medicine specialists have been raising alarms about the exhausting shifts that impact the quality of care, the ever-shrinking staff, the use of contracts that require constant turnover, and even the use of cooperatives that provide professionals unsuited to their specialties to emergency departments. Today, there is a shortage of no fewer than 3,500 medical directors in this area.

The crisis in emergency medicine

"A system that," Fugger comments in an interview with Elvira Naselli, "has patched itself up and is therefore functioning with great difficulty. "There are differences from local health authority to local health authority," she explains. "In some emergency rooms, for example, there's one doctor for red codes and one for others. But this means that the former may see two or three patients per shift, even if they are highly complex, and the latter 40. This, combined with the demanding shifts—some people have to work three weekends out of four—makes public positions unattractive. I don't have any magic formulas, but an emergency room needs leadership that makes the burden less stressful. The director needs to be there, know the patients, and act as a mentor to the younger ones, but nowadays no one transmits anything anymore. And then you need extra compensation for Saturday nights and Sundays." And, of course, also an attitude: I could never have done anything else in life, but an emergency doctor must have mental and operational calm in critical situations, speak softly and act calmly. If chaos sets in, you lose the critical patient."

So, according to Fugger, the emergency room isn't for everyone. It's not easy to handle the pressure.