Family Medicine Fall. Data of Final Allotment of MIR (Resident Internal Medicine) Posts Ministry of Health Date May 7, 2023, with 202 vacancies, two more than the 2022 calls, confirm the decline of the specialty. it is true that Salamanca It is an oasis in the middle of the desert (it has offered 100% of positions: 18 family doctors and 7 nursing), however, professionals warn that the situation is worrying and point to greater prestige and presence in the matter. Is. Involving practices in medical schools, as well as urban and rural health centers.
“MIRs do not opt for this branch of medicine mainly because of the poor working conditions and because it is highly stigmatised,” say representatives of the association. Mir Spain And they assure that it is necessary to improve their image and explain the importance of the family doctor, and they also demand that this be done from the faculties.
“It’s important for you to choose a specialty that you know it,” he acknowledges in this regard. santiago toranzo Representatives of the MIR Association castile and leon and in tone National Commission for Family and Community Medicine, who remembers that he had this specialty as a subject and that everyone at the University of Navarra had to walk through it. This will happen in Salamanca with the new study plan for the degree in medicine coming into effect this academic year. «With the old study plan there are already many students doing internships at health centers, but in the new plan they all have to spend four weeks at the health center, so they all get to know family Medicine», emphasizes the dean of Salamanca, José Carreteiro, and recalls that the Faculty has had Family Medicine as a compulsory subject since 1991, as well as Cardiology, Anatomy or Traumatology, in others. Regarding the credits of the subject, it has the same weight as Immunology, but not Traumatology. “In family Medicine You are not going to explain cardiology or traumatology again, the particular specialties of family and community medicine are explained, not pathology by instruments and systems, ”explains Carretero. Notably, in the 2027-28 academic year, all sixth year medicine students will rotate through the health centres. A year earlier, in the fifth, they will receive theoretical training.
This also Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine It emphasizes improving university training in this specialty, as well as the salaries of doctors in sparsely populated areas. And to this we must add the lack of incentives for MIR tutors in this specialty is another important issue. “If there is a shortage of personnel and resources are not provided, the rotation cannot be done well,” says Santiago Toranzo, a resident family Medicine In Ponferrada who also remembers the hardships of the pandemic: “Those who have passed through Family Medicine in recent years did not do so at the best of times, as the pandemic tightened the thread even more and generated much devastation. “
“There was no emergency feature”
santiago toranzo a native of Salamanca, whose school of medicine He has studied MIR in Family and Community Medicine at the Hospital del Bierzo in León, however, he admits that this is not the specialty to which he wants to dedicate himself.
“A lot of people do family Medicine, but to become an emergency doctor, as is my case. So the problem is even bigger, because it will be necessary to see how many residents who do this specialty end up working as family doctors and don’t do another specialty later,” says Toranzo, Rep. Mir Spain Association and in tone National Commission for Family and Community Medicine, who explains that he chose this specialty because there was no emergency department, he thought it might provide him with the training he needed. These four years of residence did not allow him to change his mind. He’s clear that being a family doctor isn’t his cup of tea and wants to be an ER.
Toranzo points out that the problem of family Medicine It could be worse if the government reneges on the commitment and characterizes the state of emergency.
