For yet another year, the medical specialty with the greatest deficit of professionals, Family and Community Medicine, has once again registered vacancies in the allocation of places for access to Specialized Health Training. The Ministry of Health has convened an extraordinary MIR to cover the 202 positions that have remained unallocated, 8% of the 2,455 positions offered.
It is not the specialty, it is the working conditions that relegate family medicine, the professionals insist. The salaries, the guards, the packed schedules... On Sunday all the pending places in other undesired specialties (Clinical Analysis, Clinical Biochemistry, Occupational Medicine and Preventive Medicine) were awarded, leaving only a remnant of family doctors pending.
Foreign graduates without a residence permit, as well as – and this is a novelty – applicants who have not previously chosen a position and may have regretted not having done so, may opt for the play-off called by Health to avoid leaving empty positions. The deadline for submitting applications for adjudication runs from today until 12 noon on Thursday, May 11.
The Federation of Associations for the Defense of Public Health has criticized the play-off system in a statement. "It has the drawback of being designed for non-EU citizens, and the problem with this is that they may have training and the specialty, but they will have problems exercising in Spain, since they need to obtain nationality or a work permit."
According to the Fadsp, the selective system for assigning places excludes a more or less numerous group of doctors from the possibility of choosing Family Medicine training "at a time when there is such a notorious deficit."
There are vacancies in nine autonomous communities: Castilla y León (55), Galicia (39), Catalonia (36), Extremadura (27), Navarra (18), Aragón (15), Asturias (6), Cantabria (4) and La Rioja (2). The Family and Community Care teaching units with the most vacancies are located in Lugo (20 places), the Pamplona-Estella area (16) and Sant Fruitós de Bages, in central Catalonia (15). In the extraordinary call, Health warns of the lack of family doctors: "The specialty of Family and Community Medicine currently needs medical specialists and a moderate deficit is expected in 2028 and 2035, according to the results of the Supply-Need Study of Medical Specialists 2021-2035”.
The ordinary awarding acts of the 8,550 MIR places have been held between April 17 and May 7. Medical-Surgical Dermatology has once again been the most requested specialty, with 79% of the 120 available places awarded on the first day. Among the 46 existing ones, the first specialties sold out have been, in addition to Dermatology (the second day of awards), Plastic Surgery, Cardiology and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Anesthesiology and Resuscitation, Ophthalmology and Orthopedic Surgery.
