Medical students in Mexico are victims of the abuse of public power, a legalized and promulgated abuse that has to be named as many times as necessary, says Francisco Domingo Vázquez Martínez, a researcher at the Institute of Public Health of the Universidad Veracruzana.
The specialist recalls that, according to official data, in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, the Mexican health system had 227 thousand 564 doctors in direct contact with patients, of which 57 thousand 362 were doctors in training, students of the Medicine degree (interns and interns) or medical specialties (residents).
“The arbitrariness they suffer implies a violation of their rights to education, health and a dignified life free of violence; by the interdependence of human rights, it also means violation of the rights to life and health of the national population.” points out in an essay that was recognized nationally with a special mention at the MEY 2022 Award.
Notes that Interns, interns, and residents are considered an important part of the medical workforce in health institutions, but in these circumstances labor exploitation is favored and their rights are violated.
In this context, he argues that health professionals in training are a vulnerable population: they have the obligations of workers and students but they do not enjoy all their rights, neither as workers nor as students.
The specialist stresses that the 2011 Constitutional Human Rights reform forces us to stop seeing doctors in training as the solution to the lack of medical personnel in health institutions. This reform recalls that there is an obligation to protect the rights and suppress from national legislation the figure of “doctors in training”: either they are students or they are workers.
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In the essay, he cites the consequences exposed by the National Human Rights Commission: “Patient safety is violated and the right to health of the national population is violated.”
Essay “Medical students in Mexico: Victims of the abuse of public power” It is made up of five parts: Introduction, Abuse legalized and promulgated; Physicians in training: students and workers; Apprentices and Practitioners, and Corollary.
