A total of 37 doctors last year requested the certificate of suitability to the College of Physicians of Ciudad Real. This is the document that the members need to start working in other countries, a trip that does not necessarily have to be only one way, but can serve to expand training and improve their work in the province. For this reason, the Faculty of Medicine organized last Friday a talk with two doctors, one that has requested the United States Medical Licensing Examination to work in the United States and another that was in the United Kingdom.
The talk is the first time that it takes place and part of doctors in the province who have already been in some country abroad. “when I came from England in 2016 I contacted the Faculty of Medicine and stated some seminars,” said David Mateo, an emergency doctor, who was in the United Kingdom doing this specialty that did not exist at the time in Spain.
Mateo is trained as a family doctor, but he wanted to be “an emergency and official emergency doctor” and when he already had a place at the Ciudad Real hospital, he sent a message to the Oxford hospital, the university asking for entering and left the United Kingdom to train in what he always wanted, after asking for a leave in Ciudad Real. “I made a hole and I spent four years taking the specialty of emergency.”
There he arrived as what is called General Practitioner, a resident “of the fourth or fifth year of emergency”, with “an acceptable salary” to his years of experience. Then he started the way in his formation with what is known as article 14. “You start to make rotations, which you lack in Spain” and, for example, if they believe that it is calmer in anesthesia or intensive, he went to that specialty. The doctors were signing those knowledge they are fulfilling. “Thus you are forming in the specialty until in the end you take an exam and give you the specialty.”
That trip abroad, explains Diego González, takes time. He is preparing to go to the United States and was the other speaker of that talk on Friday. In his case he left the Faculty in 2019, he is doing residence in Vall d’Hebron, in Barcelona. From here he requested a subspecialization, what in America is known as a Fellowship, for which he has had to “do several exams: three medical theorists, which are test type exams, and an English exam.” With these procedures you can “make a year of subspecialization formation.”
In his case, he travels because “since he was a high school student” he was always curious about “what would be a doctor in the United States.” “Interest has been growing by realizing all the opportunities offered by the country, not only to train you at the clinical level, but also in research and the amount of resources they have, that here in Spain there are no.”
“I think it is a great opportunity both at the level of professional and personal growth” and, in this sense, he explains that to get here it has been “fundamental to start drawing the plan.” “If you are interested in going there, it has been meeting for years to be able to do training and it is also important to have scientific publications,” since there are specialties in the United States that “are very competitive.” It is needed “not only to have a good curriculum, but also to have made some stay to have contacts and letters of recommendations to support you.” In this sense, he acknowledges that he would have liked to have made some external rotation “during the summer months when he was a student” because he would have allowed him to “know more about the American health system.”
About his future, he does not know if he will stay or return. “If after my year of training I am happy and if I have opportunities, I am open to stay,” but knows that the visas are complicated. “At the moment I go step by step and we will see what opportunities are presented”, since it considers that it will be “a stage of professional growth and personal growth.”
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