En different scenarios I have expressed my concern regarding its deprofessionalization, because the fragmentation of medical knowledge requires deepening on only some aspects of disease and health, neglecting the comprehensive vision of the human being and encouraging the medical specialist to be more technical and operator of equipment and instruments, repeater of clinical practice guidelines and clinical studies that have withered critical thinking in some.
As for the training of the general practitioner, they have been removing skills and “specializing” in such a way that there are medical schools aimed at preparing doctors to practice in developed countries, while others, the emphasis is placed on administration, and among the two visions, a myriad of options, with the final result of forcing the generalist to look for a specialty and then another, and only 20% of the graduates achieve a quota in Colombia to continue their training.
All of the above has generated more problems than solutions. Preventive medicine and primary care with services that are closest to citizens, is what is known by consensus to be done, leaving specialized institutes as the option for patients who require them. It’s not what we have. With few specialists it is impossible to attend with opportunity; the waste of resources with irrelevant tests and procedures is immense; the technologist specialist generally lacks the skills to communicate with his patients from his supposed intellectual height; teamwork, a condition resulting from specialization, is disjointed in too many cases. The mandate of care focused on the patient and her family to obtain the best clinical results through cost-effective medical actions that translate into the satisfaction of all those involved, today is a salute to the flag.
Medicine has been losing its soul, forgetting that more than curing we must take care of the citizens so that they maintain their well-being and the sick so that they recover it without falling into therapeutic incarceration, or in the waste of very scarce resources. Being empathic and self-regulating, we will rescue the spirit of the profession.