Does increasing medical places mean improving the shortage of specialists?

Currently, there is a shortage of doctors, from many specialties, to fill vacant positions. This is due to the large number of retirements that occur in these years and job cuts in crisis years. Despite this situation, it is ironic that there are about 2,000 doctors without a specialty who finished their studies in college years ago and have not obtained a place as residents. At the same time, there are vacancies in family medicine for specialization. In the face of these paradoxes, the Study Center of the Medical Association of Granada has once again issued a new report to evaluate whether the increase in MIR functions will be able to partially alleviate this situation. This year's appeal, as we have seen, is the largest ever, Medicine is the degree that has the highest number of admissions Final (13,990 compared to 12,629 last year, 13,059 in 2021 to 14,425 in 2020.). Thus, by C.C. aa. Since 2014-2015, Andalusia has the largest number of places, With an additional 754 places, it is followed by Catalonia (713), the Community of Madrid (415), the Valencian Community (374), and Castile and León (315).

Increase medical places

On the other hand, in the coming years Increase in new admissions to medical colleges When the colleges of Alicante (86 places) and Loyola Seville (60 places) join in the academic year 2023-2024, to which 65 places will be added from the College of Huelva next year, La Rioja also plans to create a new faculty of medicine in the coming years. However, the report notes that this is a serious error. “In Spain there are enough doctors, what we lack is doctors in some specialties for a few years.” In fact, in the 2022-2023 academic year, 8,009 students started medical school first and several hundred more in the 2023-2024 academic year. If all goes well, in 2033 or 2034, with an average age of 29 or 30, the vast majority will be able to become specialist doctors. but, In those years, doctors' retirement would be much lower, About 5,000 while there are now about 8,000. For this reason, the report finds that the measures adopted were late and insufficient. Thus, the text concludes that in addition to the increase in places dedicated to medicine, “we urgently need responsible planning in the medium and long term.” This should contain up-to-date data by specialty, age, vacant positions and growing staff needs, only in this way can problems like the current ones be addressed. “now There is a shortage of doctors in some specialties and there are about two thousand young doctors without being able to reach the position of MIR, But we repeat, after ten or twelve years, we could again have thousands of specialist doctors unemployed, working two months a year or forced to emigrate.”