With what profile do newly graduated doctors, whose careers did not pass through the pertinent quality filters, come out to society? It is the concern that arises from the excessive supply of medical schools at the country level. And the answer is immediate: They graduate with little or almost no professional practice in the field.
This is what emerges from the data available to the National Agency for the Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education (Aneaes), through the visit they carry out in the certification processes.
“The weaknesses, generally, point a little to the support of the vocational training centers. That is, the hospitals that support professional training in relation to internships. There are also, in some locations, weaknesses in terms of the quality of the professionals who attend as teachers”, lists Dr. Dina Matiauda, president of Aneaes.
Another issue, he says, that is also added to the deficit chain is the precarious or insufficient infrastructure and equipment. “It is not only regarding having comfortable rooms, but they have to be equipped, according to the academic requirements for each of the professional subjects; taking into account that the greater number of internships carried out by the institutions always benefits the quality of the training of their graduates”, says Matiauda.
Indeed, as reported by the peer reviewers who visit the institutions that undergo the accreditation process, “it is visualized” that lack of spaces to put into practice the medical knowledge that they are acquiring in theory.
“Depending on the number of students who have to carry out the internships, the hospital centers do not manage to satisfy the number of places available to receive the students. Those are the weaknesses that are detected”, he completes.
OVERDEMAND. Dr. Raúl Aguilera, former head of Aneaes, specifies that the “patient/student” ratio for professional practice is 1/2. That is, up to two students might approach a patient.
“Whatever is done outside of that parameter is wrong, it is harassment of the patient’s well-being,” Aguilera subscribes, bearing in mind what is stipulated in the Quality Criteria included in the National Model for the Evaluation and Accreditation of Medicine.
“We have a greater number of students, who, in order to meet the workload, must do theoretical classes and work in the practice fields. So, this excess demand makes the hospital centers insufficient and, therefore, the approved workload cannot be met”, he maintains.
The capacity of the practice fields, according to the aforementioned Medicine model, is twice the number of beds available in each service. Example: If the hospital has 20 clinical inpatient beds, it might receive 40 clinical medical students daily. But, in reality, those spaces are not enough.
For the rest, it explains that the non-accreditation is the result of “a sum of weaknesses found in the implementation of the academic offer”, according to the indicators.
“It is not attributable to a single cause and is due to the absence of evidence that demonstrates compliance with the quality criteria,” he concludes.
