Public Health opens MIR to specialization for more health workers

the new Public Health Surveillance Strategy (VSP)And the In which the Autonomous Communities and the Ministry of Health operate, to name a few Merge New Profiles Regarding the technological and statistical advances that this medical specialty has witnessed. Something that has been well received since Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration (Sespas), which condition the success of the monitoring network with a human resource policy that covers the current deficit of professionals and goes a step further from health by claiming, in addition to increasing MIR positions, the access of other health professions to specialist training in public health.

“The first thing is to give the possibility to employ other professionals. The second is to Increasing the number of public health professionals and the diversity of health professionals Who can enter the specialty MIR training,” details Ildefonso Hernández, epidemiologist and spokesperson for Sespas.

The specialist explains that the diversity of the body of public health professionals must be increased, and this must be through specialized health training so that they do not end up in the labs. “We have to facilitate access to Pharmacists, psychologists, biologists and biochemists To be able to train public health professionals who have various other bases, says a Sespas spokesperson.

Currently, according to the Survey of Organizational Capacity for Public Health Monitoring and Alerts prepared by the Coordination Center for Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES), the professional profile of people who are part of the monitoring services consists of: The majority by professionals in preventive medicine, public health and other medical specialties Family and Community Medicine, Microbiology and Clinical Parasitology. In addition to nursing professionals, four independent communities have veterinary and pharmacy staff, and only one district has math and statistics professionals.

Current and future shortage of professionals

It’s obvious that Hernandez should Increase the number of MIR . places With the aim of the next contact and facilitating the access of non-health professionals through other channels, since it does not “reach” with existing specialists, in addition, the average age of employees is “too high”, so that in the coming years there will be many retirements.

According to CCAES surveys, in 2021 the number of professionals assigned to public health surveillance at the national level was 1.2 professionals per 100,000 inhabitants, although they assert that in each autonomous community it is highly variable. Occasionally, as a reinforcement of the epidemic, it has increased to 3.8 professionals per 100,000 residents.

Based on these data, the specialist highlights that if the number of specialists increases, public health professionals must be given the ability in terms of salary and job This is similar to other professionals in the National Health System (SNS) because if they do not have a “disbursement”. “If you give a specialist a choice between health care service or public health centers, the former offers a better salary and that’s a disaster. We cannot try to promote public health by introducing worse conditions,” says a Sespas spokesperson.

Other Additional Health Features

For Hernandez, it makes sense that there will be other professionals with different origins in public health: “You don’t just have to monitor the extent of the virus, but the number of people who can use the resources. One of the first lines is to monitor the social determinants of health,” emphasizes the speaker, who remembers also that Without budget, staff, and power, the monitoring network will not work. Hernandez claims that “Structures are not necessary, it is only necessary that they have more personnel.”

“If tuberculosis cases are followed up and preventive treatment has to be given, it is usual for the doctor to be in the monitoring network, where a series of actions that correspond to the doctor must be carried out, but It is not necessary to run a database”Sespas spokesperson claims.

In this sense, the expert asserts that it is specialization that they “do not put doors in the field” and make room for it Unhealthy new profiles. “In the network, everything depends on each extractor from the monitoring, usually the closest doctors are the doctors, but later in data management and report production, other profiles can do this.”

For this reason, the major would like it, even if it is not via MIR, there will be room in the structure of the public health monitoring network Specialists in justice, economics, communication, statistics, or politics. “Public health is so diverse that we must be resilient and Not using the professionalism of the nineteenth century. We want her to be allowed to set other profiles with previous training in public health, such as a master’s degree,” he claims.