I wouldn’t be fooling you if I told you it’s been a complex few months. I started this journey in February 2022, immersed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced virtual meetings and the suspension of courses and other usual activities of the SMICV in the previous two years. Thanks to the good work of the previous president, Dr. Enrique Rodilla, it was possible to move forward in a more than efficient way. This magnificent work made it much easier for us to transition to the current board of directors which I have the honor to preside over.
With the rough beginnings behind us, we restarted all the usual machinery of the Society with a main objective: the return to total face-to-face attendance for the SMICV regional congress that begins on September 23.
What are the challenges facing Internal Medicine today?
Internal Medicine is a specialty of the hospital and cross-cutting field that is essential for the proper functioning of any hospital. The internists we are specialists in the management of hospitalized patients whatever the cause of admissionas well as in the follow-up of the same and of patients who do not require hospitalization, in outpatient consultations.
If the pandemic has had something good which, fortunately, we are coming out of, is that has put more in value if possible to our specialty. That has to help us to continue growing as a group and it must give a wake-up call to our health authorities to know how to weigh what is the true value of internal medicine when allocating new contracts and resources. And that events such as ending many of the COVID contracts that were covered by internists who did not have structural vacancies do not happen again.
Our reason for being are the internists who are part of our society. We owe them and it is our obligation to defend your professional and labor interests, as well as improving health care and advancing in the treatment, study and prevention of diseases in the Valencian Community. Must promote all scientific manifestations and serve as a vehicle for its dissemination and we must also advise the public powers in matters of Health and Public Health.
What long-term goals does the Annual Congress of the Society of Internal Medicine of the Valencian Community have?
The SMICV congress, which this year reaches its XXV edition, should serve as a platform for the dissemination of new treatments for the most prevalent diseases, as well as their management from a more global point of view. We must not forget the training of the youngest internists who are the ones who, for the most part, attend this important event for us. This year we have introduced a workshop to improve skills in clinical ultrasound and we also have the contest of clinical cases and presentations addressed to our residents.
What relevance does this congress have within the world of Medicine?
Our annual meeting is, behind the national congress of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicineand together with the rest of the regional societies, the most important act in the field of Internal Medicine.
The congress that we are celebrating these days has had the organization of the Vinalopó Hospital in Elche and at the head of said committee is Dr. David Vicente, a young and promising internist, whom I would like to congratulate here for his work and congratulate him on his success.
What have been the greatest advances in Internal Medicine since the first edition was held?
Much has happened since then. It would be around 1997 when I was finishing my Medicine degree and I still didn’t know what specialty I was going to train in. Shortly after, I decided to dedicate five years to becoming an internist and, to this day, I can say that it is one of the best decisions I have ever made. Along the way I have had great teachers, “old school” internists who, with much less means than us, were capable of diagnosing and treating patients in an impeccable manner. Let me have a memory right now for a Exemplary internist who developed his entire career at the General University Hospital of Elche, my hospital, and who was, until his death, several years ago, the head of the Internal Medicine section. I mean the Dr. Angel Sanchez Sevillanohe trained all those generations of residents back then and We learned from him that the most important thing in our specialty is the patients.. By and for them we are and to them we owe ourselves. Thank you Angel, wherever you are, thank you for everything you taught us. Your legacy is still very much alive in your beloved Hospital General Universitario de Elche.
Evidently, things have changed a lot in the last quarter of a century, diagnostic techniques, treatments, gene and enzymatic therapies, early detection of diseases through screening, access and dissemination of information, etc. All this has allowed a substantial improvement in healthcare and of the quality of life of patients it is included, an increase in global life expectancy.
The aging of the population is another great challenge that we face, the longevity brings new diseases that must be treated for a longer timeadapting to each population group a more personalized medicine according to the needs of each one.
But there is still a long way to go and we must not stop training and researching in order to achieve even more ambitious goals, always for the benefit of the population’s health. My commitment and that of the SMICV is firm in this regard.