The Balearic Society of Family and Community Medicine (Ibamfic) has once again put the spotlight on a practice that it considers irregular: the hiring of doctors without the specialty of Family Medicine to cover positions in Primary Care in the Balearic Islands. The entity thus supports the recent position of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC), which denounces that these incorporations violate both state regulations and European directives that require specific training to practice in this field.
The vice-president of Ibamfic, Maria Fuster, explained to Diario de Mallorca that the presence of doctors without the specialty in the health centers of the Balearic Islands is “frequent” and responds to a healthcare need that, however, “cannot be legally justified”. Fuster recalls that the only qualification to practice as a family doctor is the one obtained through the MIR system, and warns that the lack of compliance “is not anecdotal” in the islands.
The scientific organization points out that this situation has a structural background and reflects the difficulties faced by primary care in attracting and retaining young professionals. Saturated consultations, administrative pressure and working conditions that are less competitive than those of other services mean that many recently trained doctors prefer destinations such as hospital emergency departments or 061. This imbalance, says Fuster, means that when specialists are not available, “solutions that do not respect the law” are resorted to.
Both Ibamfic and semFYC urge the Government to adopt medium and long-term planning measures that can reverse this trend. Among the proposals are incentives for positions that are difficult to fill, the strengthening of programs that alleviate care pressure -such as nurse demand management-, as well as the loyalty of specialists trained in the Balearic Islands so that they do not leave primary care when they finish their residency.
From Ib-Salut, however, they insist that these contracts are temporary and are applied only for short replacements, mainly during the holiday season, stressing that they are never consolidated into permanent positions profiles without the specialty. Despite this, the scientific societies warn that allowing professionals without the required training to assume family medicine functions “compromises the quality of care and public confidence”, and call for a definitive end to this practice.
