Luis Herrador: “The family doctor is an equal specialist”

Luis Herrador (27 years old, Castellón) is in sixth year of Medicine at the URV and is preparing for the MIR. Starting in June, he will embark on “seven intensive months, with twelve hours of study a day, from Monday to Friday, drills on Saturdays and rest on Sunday” to get the best possible place in the exam, which will be held in January. He wants to specialize in Family Medicine.

Why Medicine?

I started studying Biotechnology in Valencia but, towards the third year, I saw that what I liked the most was the clinical part of medicine. I did the selectivity once more, I got the grade and I entered Medicine. That’s where I discovered my passion. I had to make a mistake to realize what I really liked.

And why Family Medicine?

Because, in the end, it is a compendium of almost all specialties. You can be in contact with the patient throughout his life, with his family, follow him, you know the psychosocial part of him. You don’t see a disease but the disease within the person. In addition, it is a very complete specialty and allows you to go as far as you want. For example, if you want to train in doing ultrasound or handling the dermatology part, you can. It is often undervalued, but it is the specialty that best represents the figure of the doctor that we all have in mind.

Halfway through the studies, the Covid broke out. How has he experienced it? What scenario will you find?

I think that Covid, in the end, is going to be a respiratory infectious disease, like there are others. I hope that is the case, that we can end up normalizing it. We have the vaccine, with the deployment we made to test and PCR. I think that we will tend to live with this, that things will not change much. It is not because it is Covid, but because it is a new disease that we did not know very well what to do with it and we did not have a protocol. As doctors, we have to know it to know how to handle it.

What do you want to contribute when you exercise?

A service to society. I think it’s an altruistic profession and it’s regarding giving back everything that society has invested in you, in a lot of years of education, in internships, and contributing to health. That’s also why I like Familia, for caring for the community, anticipating a bit of illnesses that may arise, eliminating risk factors and contributing to us having more functional and happier lives.

The situation in which health is, does it scare you?

It is an issue that needs to be resolved. Above all, as a MIR it is true that salaries must be increased because they are receiving 1,000 euros and it cannot be that this is the minimum wage. We have studied for six years, we passed a very tough opposition and we have a large care load, very long hours, 24-hour guards and it is not fair that there are such low salaries. I have many friends who have gone abroad because, here, the recognition by the administrations is not what it should be. On the part of the citizens, the truth is that they do know that they have good doctors.

The family doctor, who solves almost everything for us, is sometimes the one we least value.

90% of consultations are made in primary care and they are the ones who mostly solve things or decide who to refer you to and when to do it. And many people believe that they are doctors who do not have a specialty. It is not like that, the specialty of Family Medicine has been going on for decades and they are doctors just like the ones you can find in a hospital.