‘The price of family medicine is fixed’ – Diario Sanitario

It has been said that family and community medicine was the ‘ugly duckling’ of MIR because, while specialties such as dermatology sold out on the first day of recruitment, even rural medicine had vacancies. However, an article published by the Spanish Society of Family Physicians (Semergen), signed by doctors Torres Moreno, Blanco Herrera, Vegas Fernández and Alfaro Martínez from Albacete, refutes this point of view with data.

“It’s not that no family wants it, on the contrary, if you measure it carefully, it turns out that more people want it than many people in the hospital”

Pilar Torres Moreno, the specialist who led the study, was the first woman in her year to choose family and community medicine. She did so with 2,200, a number that opened countless doors for her, but she wanted to enter rural medicine, “which gave me more humane and closer treatment, which, by profession, I had wanted since I was young.” She worked in the health centers of Casas de Juan Núñez, Villalpardo and Peñas de San Pedro, where she treated entire families and even worked on prevention from schools.

Now, this study shows that “it’s not that no families want it, on the contrary, careful measurement shows that more people want it than many hospitals want, but, since there are so many places, So it happens that water, because there’s a lot of it and it’s cheap, is actually in greater demand than wine,” said Dr. Alfaro Martínez, who collaborated on the study.

“Family medicine should be made more attractive”

Thus, the study concludes that, using objective parameters, the attractiveness of an attribute measured as price (the relationship between supply and demand) and demand has remained stable, with a slight decline in aggregate demand,” And it’s not, in theory, as bad as could be expected compared to other specialties, he points out.

However, the signatory doctors say that “it is necessary to consider these results and seek measures that make FMyC a specialty that is chosen by future medical professionals, bearing in mind that it is not only important to be attractive. It should, and should, be for thousands of candidates each year, rather than dozens or hundreds, as is the case in other specialties.”

In this sense, Dr. Torres believes that Family Medicine should be a subject of importance in the Faculties, just as working conditions in cities should improve, especially if these are positions that are difficult to fill. He also considers it necessary that expertise be given more decision-making power. In short, “family therapy should be made more attractive.”

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