You know very well that within the field of health you never finish learning. It does not matter that the career is so extensive because even after graduating from the university you can continue with the academic training. In addition, it is not only about knowledge but about being able to access better job options. For this reason, since 2020 there is the possibility of receiving a scholarship to do a medical specialty in Cuba.
The worrying lack of specialists in Mexico
This initiative arose thanks to an agreement signed between the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) and the National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt). While it is only offered to a thousand young people per year who have passed the National Exam for Applicants to Medical Residencies (ENARM).
The idea was born due to the severe deficit of specialists that our country has. To date, it is estimated that 77,000 are needed to comply with international recommendations. Although due to the fact that there are not enough places in the hospitals of the country, the possibility of doing the medical specialty in Cuba is offered.
On the one hand, it is a way of promoting improvement in general practitioners. At the same time, it is also a project that has been criticized by the young people themselves. In the first year the benefit was offered 82 percent of the doctors who got the fellowship turned it down. Their argument was that they did not agree with the country to which they would be sent and they hoped that the offer would be extended.
Is it worth doing a medical specialty in Cuba?
For now, for this 2022 the call for a scholarship has already been published and the you can check here. But now Conacyt itself shared a series of reasons with which it seeks to motivate applicants to select this option and are the following.
Cuba offers the possibility of training professionals in 66 health sciences specialties, of which 56 are medical (24 clinical, 12 surgical, 9 biomedical, 4 basic, 4 diagnostic and 3 public health), five dentistry; four in nursing and one in Health Psychology; in all learning – doing in the real scenarios of health care and assimilating the benefits of a health system that is characterized by solid and recognized principles, such as universality, free, accessibility, regionalization and comprehensiveness, with a scope to all citizens in the countryside and the city, any political or religious affiliation, sex and race, with community and intersectoral participation and an internationalist conception.
The scientific and university communities in the Cuban National Health System (SNS) are characterized by a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to health problems, which encourages each Cuban, their well-being, access to care and rights as being human, become central axes of a dynamic process that involves postgraduate training and the continuous improvement of coexistence environments, to which residents can contribute decisively, while being nurtured by this holistic approach. Knowledge is so prolific that it can confuse if the essentials are not mastered. Hence, the academic postgraduate course considers health as one of the most relevant areas for social development and defines in the study plans of the specialties the objectives to be met during education at work, a pillar on which learning is based. developer of residents in health sciences.
Health continues to be understood by many in the world under the logic of opposition to disease and, to some extent, is seen through the prism of old paradigms. However, in Cuba it is a challenge, for those who carry out actions for health, the need to offer arguments in the light of the 21st century, with the perseverance of those who do science, to distance the mystical-magical that still demonizes and it involves the disease, as well as the biological approach in the practice of medicine. In the training of specialists in Cuba, the new paradigm is rooted, based on the social determination of health, valuing it in its fair dimension, and not only when it is lost or recovered.
By training in Cuba as specialists, professionals learn to positively influence the biology of each human being, their lifestyles, the environment that surrounds them and the organization of services within their reach, which are ultimately the “fields of Health”; but with a greater approach to the family and community environment, reinforcing the conviction of shared responsibility to improve health, and through transformative actions. Only by positively influencing health determinants is it possible to reduce morbidity and mortality, and obviously increase the life expectancy of the population.