The dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of La Laguna (ULL), Agustín Castañeyra, warns that 100 more students per school year does not solve the problem of the lack of doctors because they will be on the market “in ten or eleven years” and, furthermore, it would make the quality of teaching “quite bad”.
In an interview with Europa Press, he comments that this number of students is “unfeasible” and demands, before increasing the number of places, as Parliament has requested, that faculties first be provided with the necessary teaching staff, material and equipment to cope with this increase in students.
He says that in the clinical practices, which are carried out at the Hospital Universitario de Canarias (HUC), the Hospital de La Candelaria and the health centers, they are already “very fair” to have the adequate student/physician ratio. “If 100 more students increase, where do they do their internships? The quality is going to suffer a lot”, he comments.
Castañeyra maintains that “you have to think very carefully” about how to possibly increase the number of students (the Faculty of La Laguna incorporates between 130 and 140 each year and licenses more than 600) and makes it clear that “with the same teaching staff” the deans of the centers are opposed.
As an example, he details that in 2018 there were 25 professors and in 2025 they will remain at five due to retirement and tenured professors have gone from 50 in 2018 to 40 this year, while associates have also fallen from 90 to 80 in four years. “It is a very serious problem because places are not called for,” she adds.
The dean points out that “if they are removed, the places are covered” and for this reason they are “fighting” from the dean’s office, although he does not hide the fact that to be a full professor and professor “you have to be accredited and it costs more and more.”
At least he appreciates that in two years eight more people have been hired as associate professors, something more than the figure of an associate who cannot be put “in charge of a subject”, make teaching guides or organize practice groups.
“A university hospital, for each service, must have a linked professor and there are already services without any professors, which is why eight positions were available. Maybe, in three or four years, if we hire eight a year, we will be like in 2018 ”, he indicates.
In this line, he understands that a “structural reform” of the entire system is needed to address the lack of doctors in Spain and regrets that “it has not been done before” because the health planning agreed in 1982 is continued. “It is a problem that It comes from afar,” he says.
In his opinion, “the simple thing is to say that you have to increase students, if you give me 15 or 20 we serve them as best we can but it does not solve the problem.”
Bad contracts and less salary than in Europe
To find a short-term solution, he proposes improving working conditions because the students who finish and finish the MIR see that the contracts “are not very good” and with interim periods of up to 20 years.
“Perhaps they offer you a place abroad and they run away, and paying what they are paid,” he says.
The other additional problem that could arise is the equipment or infrastructure of the Health Sciences Campus, since they are always “doing little things” and the possibility of building a new faculty is discussed, but it always remains “in the letter to the Wise men”.
“The first thing is the teaching staff and then the other. If there are no professors, why do I want a large faculty, ”she adds.
The dean even demands more administrative positions since it has gone from eight to two in recent years. “I tell the workers that you work from 8 to 3 and if deadlines are not met, it is not met,” he stresses, stressing that there are “deficiencies in everything” and the faculty has “an enormous job” because it brings together Medicine students, Nursing and Physiotherapy.
Questioned about the high cut-off grade in Medicine (there were 2,000 pre-registrations for this course and the last student entered with a grade of 12.7) he acknowledges that it is one of the “most demanded” degrees because “everyone who finishes has an exit” although He specifies that it is a “vocational, self-sacrificing and very beautiful” formation.
