“We need more doctors!” Caesar exclaimed, looking through the window.
-“You’ll tell me how we do it”, replied Lépid, shrugging his shoulders.
-“We will give them Roman citizenship”, said Cèsar, turning, with a triumphant smile, towards his friend and collaborator.
Medicine had not been the strong point of the Roman world until then, and most of the doctors in Italy in the middle of the first century B.C. they were Greek – that’s why almost all medical vocabulary is Greek; as the great Miguel Mihura said, “a doctor is someone who accompanies you to the grave while speaking to you in Greek”.
That is why Caesar, a pragmatic and innovative man, approved granting Roman citizenship to all those who practiced or wanted to practice medicine in Rome. The Roman historian Suetonius explains that he did it “so that not only they would live in the city more willingly, but also so that others would find it desirable”.
I remember this measure by Julius Caesar, almost 2,100 years ago, regarding the alarming and inexplicable lack of doctors in Spain. As a result of this lack, waiting lists increase dangerously and our quality of life worsens (and we are also living longer).
Even the Ministry of Health recognizes that there is a shortage of doctors, not a few, no, the forecast is that by 2027 the deficit will reach 9,000. This year, 3,660 first-time places have been announced in the faculties of Medicine. Why don’t they call more? Considering that a doctor does not improvise, and that he needs several years of training, this will get worse. This is indeed a question of the State.
8,772 places were offered to 13,990 applicants in the January mock exam (and not all are covered). Why aren’t more offered? To make matters worse, since they are poorly paid and a third do not have a fixed position, nearly 1,800 doctors go to practice in other countries every year and this exacerbates the deficit we are experiencing.
Julius Caesar started a talent attraction program (this also comes from the Romans) to attract doctors to Rome. Neither do we. In the end, in view of so much accumulated ineffectiveness of political leaders and rectors, we will end up begging: “No doctor in the room?”.
