Jesús Díez Manglano, president of the SEMI.
The Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI) has participated this Thursday in the Senate’s Health and Consumption Commission, where the senators of the different parliamentary groups have been able to learn about the demands and Claims of Spanish Internal Medicine to rethink health strategies to treat Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 diseases. The organization has claimed the role of Internal Medicine as “backbone specialty of the SNS” to face the post-pandemic situation and the challenge of chronicity and urges to solve the lack of generational change of internists
In said Commission, the president of the SEMI, Jesús Díez Manglano, has shown that Internal Medicine, as a general, transversal specialty with a global vision of the patient, has played a key role during the pandemic, serving 80 percent of hospitalized non-critical Covid-19 patientsin addition to its important work in the care of non-Covid-19 patients who are complex, chronic, multipathological or with pathologies of a systemic nature, whose attention “urgently resume quickly” after the break caused by the pandemic, after mentioning the impact of the pandemic on the group of chronic and multimorbid patients.
The role of Interna in the post-pandemic
In relation to the pandemic, after analyzing the comparative evolution of the accumulated incidence in Spain by waves (with 430.10 cases now in March 2022 notified on each date with a diagnosis in 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants compared to the 3,418 reached in the peak of the sixth wave), as well as vaccination by country (83.65 percent of the population with complete vaccination in Spain and 87.89 percent with at least one dose as of March 3), Manglano has mentioned the long covid and to new challenge for the SNS as a wholea field in which Internal Medicine and internists are also carrying out important work with specific queries.
He has also reiterated the commitment of internists to research, citing as an example the SEMI-COVID-19 registry, one of the largest repositories of clinical data on SARS-CoV-2 in Europe and the world, with the participation of more than 700 researchers from 137 hospitals, data from more than 25,000 patients and with 41 publications in national and international impact journals on COVID-19.
In the words of the president of the SEMI: “it seems clear that if we want to change the health system and adapt it to the current reality, we must promote those professional figures that are more versatile and that they have a global vision of the patient, as is the case of the specialist in Internal Medicine”.
Deficit of internists in the NHS
Díez Manglano has also mentioned the problem of the lack of generational change in the specialty, a circumstance that worries the SEMI. “We have vacant places that are not filled in hospitals, because there are no professionals to cover them, and we have to rethink this and approach it with guarantees”, insisted the president of SEMI.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, the Medicine services Internal attend to 54 percent of patients who are hospitalized for infections in Spain, and 95.3 percent if they are over 65. Regarding the possibility of creating new specialties (such as Infectious) now at the center of public debate, according to SEMI, “this would mean a greater fragmentation and atomization of the SNS that would be detrimental to the necessary global vision and comprehensive approach to the patient”, especially in a context of increasing population aging, chronicity, multiple pathologies and burden of comorbidity.
“That fragmentation and atomization makes little sense if, as we see in our day-to-day consultations, we move towards a profile of patient who increasingly requires a global, holistic and integrative approach, in collaboration with the rest of the specialties and healthcare levels”, remarked the president of SEMI, after analyzing and making a comparison of the situation of the services and doctors in Spain and in the rest of the European countries in the fields of clinical microbiology and infectious diseases.
Finally, it has also been highlighted that “Internal Medicine wants to be heard, to a greater extent, in the spheres of decision in matters of health policy, in order to be able to configure and move further towards a better SNS for professionals and patients and towards an Internal Medicine with capital letters focused on the patient and their needs”. Also to “rethink how it should be and how hospital care of the future should be configured and to restructure the SNS with guarantees. It is impossible to do it without having Internal Medicine ”, he remarked at the end of the appearance.
Although it may contain statements, data or notes from health institutions or professionals, the information contained in Medical Writing is edited and prepared by journalists. We recommend the reader that any questions related to health be consulted with a health professional.