The lack of doctors to cover the summer holidays is leading the autonomous communities to search formulas to alleviate the situation. The Valencian Community has recently announced that it will hire recent graduates in Medicine who have not taken the MIR to try to mitigate the absence of professionals. The sector, however, does not share this measure.
The Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC), with the 17 federated societies of Family and Community Medicine that make it up, have shown this Monday his “most resounding opposition” to this decision. “This contractual model is usually reproduced in numerous points of the geography throughout the State every year during the summer months, as well as at other specific moments,” they denounce.
semFYC regrets that some communities justify these contracts as a solution to an exceptional situation due to the lack of professionals. They allude to the exceptional situation referred to in royal decree-law 29/2020 on urgent measures to deal with the health crisis caused by Covid-19, which was repealed twelve months after it came into force.
But Family doctors say that there is not “an unpredictable exceptional situation”, but that the problem lies in “a situation of deficit in planning by the Ministries and Administrations” that prevents having the necessary number of doctors. They also regret that the organizational models that can meet these demands for health care of the population are not being implemented.
Family Medicine societies also denounce that hiring recent graduates means “a risk” for patients and in the performance of Primary Care, since «without having completed the process of acquiring the skills of the specialty in Family and Community Medicine, the group of future doctors do not have the necessary knowledge to respond to health needs of the population attended and opening the door to possible clinical errors with unforeseeable consequences for both the patients and their environment”. Thus, they consider that those who have carried out the MIR are underestimated, for those who ask for quality contracts and good working conditions.
From students to tutors
But the risk, they maintain, is also for recent graduates who practice the profession, since they do not count, denounces semFYC, “with sufficient regulated training.” “This is an issue linked to the legal certainty of responsible professionals. This even concerns the fact that some of them can carry out care activities in medical offices or Resident Physician Tutors. It may be the case that they tutor fourth-year residents with more skills than themselves; these R4 in a few weeks will become Young Doctors and Family Doctors”, they continue.
For all these reasons, Family doctors demand that new management formulas be implemented that can respond to the personnel needs that occur especially during the summer months. «The solution does not go through the hiring of doctors without MIR, and instead this alternative contributes to discredit the specialty of Family and Community Medicine in the eyes of citizens, and transmit a distorted image of the reality of family medicine, and of Primary Care”, concludes the semFYC.
