2023-11-13 19:31:00
Dr. Carlos García Calvo is looking forward to retirement. After 39 years of career, he is preparing to hang up his robe in the coming days. He says goodbye happy, “truly happy”, to Villanueva de Gumiel, Tubilla del Lago, Santa María del Mercadillo and Villalbilla de Gumiel, the four towns in the Ribera del Duero in which he has worked as a doctor these last two years. All this following three decades in the Emergency Service of the Río Hortega University Hospital in Valladolid. There he fought hard and faced all types of diagnoses, with days that ranged between 300 and 400 emergencies. Always with adrenaline pumping. At the foot of the canyon. In fact, for several years he held one of three section chief positions. Then the pandemic broke out, turning the world upside down. And, once the ravages caused by the coronavirus were overcome, García Calvo, from Valladolid by birth, decided that the time had come to change direction in his professional career.
It was then that he chose to close the circle and return to the same place where he had taken his first steps as a doctor: the towns of the Ribera del Duero. Without fear of the “abyss” that such a change of direction represented, he landed in the basic health area of Aranda Rural two years ago. Initially, he came for a year, but finally he continued for another year because, as he himself acknowledges, he found himself “very comfortable.”
García Calvo details that “he had that thorn.” One of the first substitutions that he made as a doctor, shortly following finishing his degree at the University of Valladolid, was in Villanueva de Gumiel. And, precisely, he has ended up reconnecting with this riverside town. So the circle, his circle, might not have been completed in a better way. «I have always liked rural medicine, so I say goodbye happy. It has been a total success. When the pandemic ended, I saw my retirement approaching. And that, added to the house we have in Vadocondes, led me to come to the town and finish where I had started,” he says. As surprising as it may sound, when García Calvo finished the race, “there was a lot of unemployment.” He came to Ribera del Duero because at that time the job options were greater than in Valladolid. However, in his city they ended up offering him a temporary contract in the ER and he accepted. So for stability he returned home.
These last two years have helped García Calvo to experience the profession from a very different point of view. And if there is something he values positively, it is the greater time that rural doctors can dedicate to their patients. «In the towns is where medicine is best practiced right now. Above all, because you have time. “You know the people and you have a good relationship with everyone,” he says in this regard. What’s more, he highlights that one of the big problems of health centers in cities lies in the lack of time. This being the case, García Calvo defends that in rural areas “is where the best medicine can be made, the closest to the patient. And this is something I tell my residents.”
A black future. Despite these factors that work in favor of the towns, the truth is that many others work once morest them, such as the greater distance to a hospital. Added to this is that half of the staff currently working at Aranda Rural may retire in the short term and that professional relief is not always guaranteed. Given these circumstances, García Calvo predicts “a very bad future.” He believes that at this rate they will have to reduce consultations and increase medical transportation to transport patients if there are not enough doctors. Be that as it may, he insists on recommending rural medicine: “You feel very welcome.”
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