At the last Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, the worrying shortage of specialists in family and community medicine was reflected in the worrying situation, a situation suffered by the entire National Health System and which the Balearic Islands are no exception, due to their unique idiosyncrasy and their status as an island territory.
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Health adheres to the manifesto of councillors for urgent state measures in primary care
Faced with this shortage of healthcare professionals, their ageing and the difficulty of attracting and retaining them, the Conselleria de Salut supports the measures demanded in the manifesto of councillors, especially in state actions that include specialised healthcare training and as a matter of urgency.
Thus, the manifesto states:
Firstly, we must ensure that the system for choosing MIR places does not leave vacancies unoccupied, as has happened this year with two hundred vacancies throughout Spain. Given the exceptional circumstances in which we find ourselves, it is necessary to find exceptional solutions to ensure that all the places offered are filled. If we do not return to a face-to-face system, the telematic process must be carried out with maximum transparency, guaranteeing that applicants know in real time the places available at any given moment. This change should be effective for the next MIR call. Furthermore, it should be made easier for the Order regulating specialised health training to ensure that even those places that are awarded are not left unfilled when the successful candidates do not finally take up their posts, resigning before signing the contract.
Secondly, we must not continue to validate a training system that generates a growing displacement to other healthcare scenarios that have not yet been resolved. This generates a worsening of the chronic deficit of specialists in family and community medicine, which exacerbates the problem of retirements in this field. We refer here to the need to create a speciality in emergency medicine in Spain. We must proceed as soon as possible with the creation of this new speciality with preferential processing, as was done a few months ago with Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, if possible before the next MIR exam takes place.
Thirdly, it is necessary to urgently increase the number of places for specialised medical training in family and community medicine so that we can face the generational changeover without the prospect of a deficit that the Ministry’s report warns about. But to be able to do this, we need a more flexible and more flexible system for accrediting teaching units. That is why it is also necessary to approve, before the next MIR call, the revision of the regulations on accreditation requirements for teaching units in the speciality of family medicine, which, among other measures, should keep the call open so that accreditation is permanently open.
Fourthly, once this accreditation system and the training programme for the speciality are reformed and allow a greater number of places to be accredited, it is necessary to do so using a call for extraordinary MIR places in the speciality of family and community medicine. The Spanish Government and the regional governments must agree on an extraordinary training plan to undertake a significant increase in the number of training places in this speciality in the MIR calls in the coming years to correct the deficit situation to which the retirement forecasts are leading us. We believe there is an urgent need to increase the number of annual training places for family and community medicine throughout Spain by around a thousand.
It is essential to develop the instruments that will allow the National Health System to plan its training offer with greater rigour in the future. Given that the MIR system is an instrument of state coverage in which specialists are trained in the different autonomous communities for the entire National Health System, it is essential to definitively create a State Register of Health Professionals that can guide the training needs of specialists to prevent the appearance of shortages of professionals in certain specialities.
We must promote and implement, through the State Action Plan, all possible measures to facilitate the development of the competencies of doctors specialising in family and community medicine, giving them the time and space to recover their role as the backbone of the best comprehensive care for citizens. We believe that these proposals can serve as the basis for a major national agreement on shock measures to tackle a problem that is currently affecting professionals and patients throughout Spain. The future of the National Health System cannot allow us not to act with the utmost diligence on such an important issue. There is no more urgent problem or more pressing need in Spanish healthcare right now. For this reason, we must adopt a joint commitment to move forward with the maximum consensus on the measures within the State’s competence that hold the key to resolving this situation.
The Regional Ministry of Health considers it urgent to guarantee health care coverage, through a major national pact of shock measures, which will make it possible to reverse the situation suffered throughout Spain by both professionals and patients. For this reason, it adheres to the manifesto that was already sent to the former Minister of Health, Carolina Darias.
It is worth remembering that in a letter addressed to the current Minister of Health, Monica Garcia, the regional councillor expressed her concern about the current situation of the Spanish public health system. The shortage of health professionals, their ageing and the difficulty in attracting and retaining them highlights – stated Manuela García in the letter – the Ministry’s inadequacy in planning the real needs of professionals in the National Health System, which has led to an unprecedented crisis of health professionals.