No doubt Our future doctors are well prepared in terms of technical knowledge of this discipline, but I’m afraid that not enough So that once doctors graduate they can use their profession to help people, either to prevent them from getting sick or to treat them when they are already sick. The sick person is not only made up of organs that work in coordination with each other and we are able to take care so that they do not stop working and if they stop working then we are also able to solve the problem. are capable. but Apart from this physical activity Of all its physical structures, the sick person has other dimensions that are affected when their biological function gets out of control. these are Emotional Dimension, Social Dimension and Spiritual Dimension That combined with their biological or physical dimension make us the people we have to help with our professional competence acquired in the Faculty. But I ask myself again, are we graduates with enough skills? Address the most intimate dimension of the person What is emotional, social and spiritual? I’m afraid not.
The sick person, who is waiting for us to graduate or specialize so that we can help him, wants us to worry about his illness, that we are able to diagnose it, treat it to cure it. can, but we don’t forget who is suffering from it. Not only will our scientific knowledge serve us for this, we will need communication skills In order to properly inform them of what they are suffering or what they need in order to heal, we will need skill in making the sometimes difficult decisions that come our way. We can’t forget that doctors contribute our scientific knowledge, assess the condition and we specify it in the therapeutic indication. patient brings his price scale, how to build their future and their unique concept of health and quality of life; And to accept or reject it will be specified by weighing the medical indication. we have to note that Seek maximum benefit for the patient remains the basic engine of medical practice,
But it is the will of the patient that is going to determine the right direction and extent of our medical practice.
maybe we’re teaching completely science based medicine And we have to understand that science is the only one Inadequate basis for clinical care Doctors have to face when they graduate. Scientific approaches are basic and necessary For this clinical care, but there are other dimensions of the sick person that need to be taken care of while also prescribing medicine. i am referring to emotional, social and existential aspects To which medical education should also pay attention. If the doctor in his daily clinical activity only focuses his attention on the disease, forgetting who is suffering, he is not doing it quite right. to be objective with what we see (symptoms, signs, diagnostic tests, etc.), but at the same time We must not forget that we are dealing with a person.
from my experience with the sick for many years last stage of life I understand that people’s needs in relation to health go far beyond the simple model of curing disease. I have also seen Patient’s understanding of how to respond to disease And suffering demands an approach focused on serving the individual from the doctor. Medical professionals, especially in palliative care, who express no emotion in their practice, but only their technical skills, may not be able to offer what the patient most needs at the time.
I have written all this so far so that I can continue to reflect on who teaches medicine. I understand that the university Request required educational requirements for those accessing teaching, But I don’t understand that these requirements are not related to the subject they are going to teach. Those of us who graduated many years ago didn’t know that, we were taught by people who had substantial clinical experience To be able to broadcast what we need to know to exercise our profession; Even those who taught us preclinical subjects irradiated us in another way with the need to know the anatomy, biochemistry and physiology of the human body, which were going to be responsible for its functioning. . Now we see in our children that they have chosen to study the same career as First courses are not attractive, Although technically they are well taught, but Sometimes taught by physicists, chemists, biologists with no patient care experience, although the influence remains in prestigious foreign universities, with a lot of curricular stuff based on the publication of scientific articles in journals. they are definitely getting transmit scientific knowledge That our children study with the sole intention of passing each subject so that they can access clinical courses with which they identify more with the profession they have chosen to study.When I graduated, it never came to my mind that I could dedicate myself to medical education, My academic record will not give me that opportunity compared to other faculty colleagues with exceptional records who have been on the faculty of teachers and who are now professors. Years passed, and when I had accumulated my clinical experience in palliative care I was invited as a visiting professor at several universities to teach the discipline I had learned from patients during my years of teaching. Clinical Experience in Palliative Medicine, I have felt very comfortable sharing my clinical experience from a science and humanitarian point of view with the doctors of the future. From this point of view, I want to share my reflection on the question asked in the title of this article.
there is no doubt that Spanish doctors have good undergraduate and graduate trainingHowever, I believe that in order to achieve a profile, it is necessary to address the reforms Medical training focuses more on the human dimension of the patient and their needs as an individual. The medical student needs to graduate with greater maturity to understand what health and disease are to the individual, such as the scope of patient preferences and values, and the limits of science in both research and applications. Clinic.
Should we continue like this? I think if we continue like this then our doctors will certainly deal very well with the anatomy of the person, but Will have difficulty dealing with other aspects Which fulfills the integrity of the person. Can we change it? Who can?
It seems, as announced by the present Minister of Universities, Joan SubiratsThat professional experience would add points to being a professor of medicine, at least the draft said law council of universities in your hands. Hopefully we can teach medicine in a better way than science and experience. I think we still have time to do better.
