Contact EURACT

E-mail

Phone
(32) 16 33 74 64

FAX
(32) 16 33 74 80

SPAIN

Basic Medical Education

No recent major changes since the last report. Most undergraduate students from the different universities must spend some time in Primary Health Care settings as part of their undergraduate education, but the recognition of the universities to that task is in general not satisfactory for most of the primary care tutors involved. Tutors that teach students in the health centres are not paid, have not more protected time and only a very few proportion become an academic nomination. Also the time spent by the students in the health centres is too short and mostly at the end -last year- of the basic medical education

Vocational Training

The new program has been presented in different forums but still it has not been implemented, for different reasons (other specialities also want a longer program, increment of costs, shortage of tutors, next year we have regional and general elections, and who know.).

Continuing Medical Education

In Spain CME is still not compulsory but still the different medical bodies are very active and the opportunities very high for they that want to do it. The National Society (semFYC) and also the regional federated societies are offering a very high number of courses, workshops for their members, and usually the participation is very high. Expert GP's in the different topics are key speakers in almost all courses and they are very much “primary care oriented”.

Specific meetings for course organisers and clinical teachers are running also all over the country.

Health Care

Spanish health care seems to have a lack of doctors: specialists and also GP's. The Catalan Society of Family and Community Medicine and the Teaching Units are doing a survey to know the professional trajectory of the trainees that have finished our specialty in the last five years.

What did I do as EURACT Council member?

The New Definition of GP/FM has been distributed in its original version (English) to the council of semFYC and also to the federated societies, and also to all Course Organizers all over the country (we call them Coordinador de Unidad Docente). It has also been presented in different forums. Now it has been translated in Spanish and I have done the last overview of the translation. And it starts to appear as bibliographic reference in some of the last articles published in our journals.