The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias.
The Minister of Health, Caroline Darias, has identified the five MIR specialties that will need further reinforcement in the coming years to combat the personnel deficit in Spain. A study carried out by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has determined that the areas of Anesthesiology and Resuscitation, Family and Community Medicine, Geriatrics, Psychiatry and Radiodiagnosis They are the ones that will require a greater number of doctors between now and 2035 to compensate for their situation.
The research has not only taken into account the distribution of professionals by specialties in recent years, but has also calculated the needs that the National Health System will have with the demographic change that Spain is going through, since each time the bulk of the population older than 65 years is larger and the youth group smaller. For this reason, other specialties such as Clinical and Biochemical Analysis, Cardiovascular Surgery, Thoracic Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology they will be the ones with the greatest “super habit” of specialists.
“The need to increase or decrease specialties are in line with the demographic X-ray”the Minister of Health pointed out at the press conference following the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System.
In order to address this policy of changes in the distribution of health specialties, Darias has already announced that a Human Resources Commission of the National Health System (SNS) in which the roadmap will be marked on where the MIR positions must be emphasized more. “We are responding to these needs“, he pointed out.
4.4 specialists per 1,000 inhabitants
The report prepared at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria collected the data in June 2021. By then, there was a total of 136,344 doctors working in Spain. 31 percent were part of Primary Care, 59.5 percent from specialized areas and the rest from other sectors.
As a result, the two authors of the investigation, Patricia Barber and Beatriz González, determined that the medical specialist radio was of 4.4 per 1,000 inhabitantswhich places Spain in fifth position in the European ranking, only behind Greece (6,2), Austria (5,3), Portugal (5.3) and Norway (5.0). Other countries like France, Italy or UK they present worse figures in the comparative average.
Despite this position, the analysis has also identified that between 2018 and 2021 there wasa decrease in personnel of 1.77% of the workforce, especially due to the decline in personnel within Primary Care.
The Minister of Health has set herself the objective of compensating for this deficit with an increase in places that would allow us to be back in a positive scenario for the year 2027. “We are going to have to take action”Darias has exposed.
Beyond the distribution of specialties and the volume of staff, the research that the Ministry of Health will use as a reference has also confirmed the Quantitative increase of women in health staff up to 61% of the positions analysed, which is 16 points more than in 2007. While the staff is also older. Now 21 percent of doctors are over 60 years old. While 14 years ago the percentage did not exceed 9.7 percent.
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