Take care of the professionals who look after the people’s health It is a need that has become especially evident following the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a challenge for which it is essential promote research on prevention and care and, above all, bet on the specific training of health professionals who are prepared to offer appropriate care and response to the specific health needs of other health professionals.
With this objective, the Chair for the Health of Health Professionalsa pioneering project in the world, promoted by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the Galatea Foundation, the Barcelona College of Physicians (CoMB) and Mutual Médica.
Protecting the health of health professionals is a necessary condition to also guarantee the quality of care and, therefore, the health of patients. Health professionals face, in their daily practice, high stress situations and various risk factors that cause them to have higher indicators of emotional suffering and mental health problems than the population average.
Have rigorous information on the health status of health professionals, identify risk factors and protective factors or what are the best preventive and care strategiesamong other issues, is essential to design and implement effective interventions, both therapeutic and preventive. Generate this knowledge and translate it into specific training programs aimed at health professionals that they must care for other health professionals is the main objective of the Chair for the Health of Health Professionals.
Reduce the risk of disease
The Chair for the Health of Health Professionals was born with a clear vocation to connection with other universities and institutions around the world, as well as collaboration and support to different organizations that may be interested in their work, such as occupational health services of health organizations. This training will work by projects and already has some defined research areassuch as the identification of Protective factors that can help reduce the risk of professionals getting sick; the influence of the feminization of health professions on the health of professionals and their healthcare needs, or the deepening of the emotional health of university students.
The new Chair for the Health of Health Professionals is attached to the Department of Psychiatry and Legal Medicine of the UAB, directed by Professor of Psychiatry Antoni Bulbena, who also assumes the direction of the chair. According to Bulbena, “the creation of the chair represents a very important qualitative leap for research and training in the field of health of health professionals, since it must allow this issue to be given the relevance and resources it deserves”.
Added to the prestige provided by the UAB is the experience and knowledge that the Galatea Foundation has accumulated over more than 25 years working, as a leading entity, for the health of health professionals in the fields of prevention, assistance and training.
The chair also has the leadership of CoMB, which promoted the first comprehensive care program for sick doctors (PAIMM) in the State, at the end of the 90s, a commitment advanced for its time that has become an international benchmark. For its part, Mutual Médica, the doctors’ mutual society, reiterates, with its participation in the project, its constant commitment to the well-being of doctors and the projection of these initiatives throughout the State.
Guarantee quality of care
To begin with, the Chair already has a very important volume of data that the Galatea Foundation has collected over 25 years and which can now be exploited and managed more efficiently, with the aim of creating an updated and dynamic information system. on the health of health professionals.
Since its inception, the Galatea Foundation has served more than 13,000 health professionals throughout the State, the majority from Catalonia, in addition to carrying out training and interventions in teams and healthcare organizations. It also has the resources of Clínica Galatea, the only healthcare center dedicated monographically to mental health care for health professionals.
For its part, Mutual Médica, the mutual society of doctors dedicated to the protection and well-being of the group for more than one hundred years, continues to join forces and collaborate in initiatives for the care of the mental health of doctorsas it has done since the birth of the PAIMM, as well as through its Foundation’s CUIDAR(me) program, participating in the creation, in 2022, of the Psychological Care Service for Medical Students (SAPEM) and in the annual Study of impact of COVID on the health of doctors in Spain.
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