The National Union of Medical Associations (CESM) expressed on Wednesday its dissatisfaction with the actions taken by the leadership of the University of La Laguna (ULL) to enhance the educational standards and future prospects of the Faculty of Medicine, deeming them “inadequate”. Despite this, they acknowledged that there have been some “significant advancements.”
In a statement, CESM highlighted the “significant challenges” faced by medical students at ULL and emphasised some long-awaited “achievements”, such as the commitment to remunerate the three-year periods that had been unjustly denied to contracted professors with PhDs, labelling it as an “illegal practice.”
Recently, ULL’s rector, Francisco García, announced on the platform X that over 100 new positions for associate and affiliated professors had been made available, along with resolutions concerning salary bonuses, including the three-year periods issue.
However, CESM noted that up until a recent Joint Commission meeting, only 47 teaching positions within the Faculty of Health Sciences had been opened for public recruitment.
Out of these 47 positions, 13 are designated for Nursing, leaving only 34 for Medicine, distributed across: 1 full-time; 1 professor; 2 associate professors; 9 permanent professors; 2 part-time roles (3 hours weekly with a monthly salary just over 300 euros); and 22 affiliated professors. CESM emphasised the need for these roles to be publicly advertised, with clear deadlines for applications and merit submissions, as well as the establishment of merit evaluation committees, complaint timelines for participants pre and post examinations, and ultimately, for the positions to be filled hopefully within a year.
The unions also highlighted that around seven tenured and full professors are set to retire this year, further exacerbating the already critical situation.
“The currently available positions are highly inadequate. The lack of suitably qualified and full-time teaching staff jeopardises the quality of education and, ultimately, the preparedness of students to tackle the challenges of the medical field,” they added.
CESM expressed, “Sadly, this flawed academic strategy is evident in the recent results of ULL’s Faculty of Medicine students in the Medical Resident position (MIR) exams.”
“It’s disheartening to be ranked at the bottom among all public universities in Spain, surpassing only two private institutions,” lamented CESM.
