the corridors of the medical school, practically stripped / sebaStian casali
Contrary to what happens in the rest of the National University of La Plata (UNLP), where faculties and dependencies resume face-to-face classes that they had suspended during the pandemic, medical students assure that in that academic unit they continue to study remotely and that only those who are in the last year of their studies carry out internships in contact with patients. Meanwhile, it is estimated that of some 33,000 students, at the time this note was published, more than 85 percent had not yet started and among those who started – around 5,000, from the first year – they did so virtually or hybrid (between face-to-face and remote). Just last week, forced by the electoral process that called the student body to the polls, the faculty recovered some of the movement that, for example, it did not have during the admission course: as in 2021, the more than 8,000 new enrollees who this year they signed up for the different races that are dictated in 60 and 120 followed that instance without moving from their homes.
The paradox did not go unnoticed and controversy arose: “They open the faculty to vote, but we still cannot attend,” protested, for example, from the group Vientos de Abajo (Patria Grande), which together with Unite (PCR) make up the front that has the minority of the student body and that in 2018 accompanied the candidacy of Dean Juan Ángel Basualdo Farjat, who is up for re-election this year.
“They are going to trust professionals who are being trained through a computer”
Now, the managing director for Vientos de Abajo, Joaquín García, stated that “there is a lot of discontent in the facu, the quality of teaching is leaving much to be desired” and painted a picture of the situation with which some teachers consulted by this also agreed. daily.
García, who is already undergoing the Compulsory Final Practice (PFO) -a previous step to obtain a medical degree-, said that before the pandemic “he went to hospitals once or twice a week. He listened to patients, he saw chest films, he read electrocardiograms, he knew how to take blood pressure to record vital signs ”, fundamental questions for professional practice that, he said, meant an important foundation for the skills required by the PFO. But since the pandemic, and still today, “only the final practices are carried out, which means that we only see the first patient in the last year of the degree. This affects the lives of people who tomorrow are going to trust professionals who are being trained through a computer or a telephone,” warned García, and called for “debating what is happening so that professionals who leave the faculty are up to the circumstances”, because, he warned, “without internships and without attendance it is very difficult to achieve quality training”.
“In the faculty we have been without full attendance for more than two years”
To give an example, the situation affects first-year students studying Histology and Anatomy, two core subjects of the degree. “In the faculty we have been without full attendance for more than two years. The only contact with the patient is the teaching assistants, who film the material and then upload it to the virtual campus that the students consult at home. And they consider that as a hybrid class. The truth is that in Medicine there is still nothing: most of the courses have not started and when they do, at least at the beginning, they will not be face-to-face ”, they assured EL DIA from one of those chairs.
While from the subjects of Infectious Diseases and Transplantation, Professor Marisa Cobos explained that the modality of the courses is at the discretion of each teacher: “There are subjects that need practical activities and others in which the practice is less,” she said, and He clarified that “virtuality remained an important tool for those jobs in which it is not really necessary to be in person.” In this sense, she said that in the case of Infectious Diseases there are activities that will be purely face-to-face, some hybrid and others virtual. Cobos closed her idea valuing virtuality, which “brought some comforts”, but in a career as Medicine “it cannot be used 100 percent because there are practical activities that require being with the patient”.
From the Rectorate they confirmed that in most of the faculties “the norm is practically total presence” and that in Medicine “the regular courses did not begin, which will begin in the first days of April”. Instead, the admission course was developed “virtually, taking into account that when it was defined, back in February, it was not so clear that the pandemic was going to allow face-to-face attendance,” they said at the UNLP, where they estimated that the Regular courses also in Medical Sciences would have “attendance as a norm and virtuality is expected to be a complement for special cases”.
Meanwhile, Joaquín García insisted that full presence in 60 and 120 “is still absent”. And he added that subjects such as Biology, of which he is an assistant, will continue to be “totally virtual” and that others from higher years will have face-to-face activity “from time to time.” Aware of the overcrowding that for years has placed the Faculty of Medical Sciences among the most populous of the UNLP, the student asked himself what is missing to guarantee a complete attendance: “Space, budget, teachers? We don’t know what is the reason why we don’t come back, if we continue to be careful because of the pandemic or what is happening. Everything is debatable, but the aggravating circumstance is that there is no place for debate”.
It should be noted that this newspaper conveyed the concern to spokesmen for the Deanship of 60 and 120, where they simply limited themselves to saying that the situation “no” needs to be clarified. Teachers and students think so.
