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SPAIN

Basic Medical Education

The Deans Council presented last year the “White Book” of undergraduate curricula trying to adapt in the coming years the new curricula to the Bologna definition. They have done a lot of work reviewing the curricula from different European countries, having interviews with key figures of the medical profession and distributing out questionnaires to key personalities with the proposal to offer a new undergraduate program, and they say they have succeeded. But nothing has changed yet, in the next future we will still not have Departments of Family Medicine or of General Practice, also not full professors. Family Medicine will be under the big umbrella of Internal Medicine and the other Medical Specialities as a “subspecialty” at the same level as Palliative Care, Intensive Care, Geriatrics, and so on.

Our university is bureaucratic, old fashioned and most of the structure wants to maintain the actual position without loss of power of the existing Departments and Professors.

Vocational Training

Finally next may the first promotion of trainees with the new four year program will start. Our trainees will work full time and under supervision during four years instead of only for three tears. Every trainee has his/her own tutor, and it has been recommended by the educational authorities that one tutor must only be available for maximum two trainees. A lot of teaching the teachers courses are going on throughout the country. After our positive experience in that field, in some regions hospital tutors are following primary care tutors in the accreditation and reaccreditation system trough theoretical education (teaching the teachers courses), and also starting experiences with “new” educational methods for their trainees (feed back sessions, student based learning).

Different experiences are going on trough all the country, mostly oriented to formative assessment, even though summative assessment is still mandatory for the trainee to obtain the certificate.

CPD/CME

The Scientific Society (national and regional) is providing a lot of educational opportunities for the certificated doctors, and fortunately in the last years we have an independent accreditation system for courses, workshops, and all different educational activities (SaAP) . The system that takes in care: not only the adequacy of the contents of the course, the quality of the teachers, the number of students, the number of hours, the students and teachers evaluations … but also the total independence of the contents and recommendations from the pharmaceutical companies.

CPD/CME is still not mandatory but in some regions has been developed for GP's and also other specialist the so cold “professional career”, that means that a little, but not negligible amount of the monthly income can be increased if the professional can show that he/she has been involved in a certain number of hors in educational activities (as pupil, as teacher,…) or in research activities.

What have I done as EURACT Council Member?

EURACT is better known and EURACT documents are used as a the European reference in our recommendations for certain topics like teachers profile, educational agenda for teachers and trainees, recommended educational methods, …. And perhaps in the coming years a Spanish “Academy” will see the light.