“We need more doctors!” César exclaimed, looking through the window.
-“Well, you’ll tell me how we do it,” Lepidus replied, shrugging his shoulders.
–“We will give them Roman citizenship,” declared Caesar, 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 1st century BC. They were Greek – hence 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 type, approved granting Roman citizenship to all those who practiced or wanted to practice medicine in Rome. The Roman historian Suetonius says that he did it “so that not only would they inhabit the city in a better way, but also that it would be desirable for others.”
I remember this measure by Julius Caesar, almost 2100 years ago, regarding the alarming and inexplicable lack of doctors in Spain. As a consequence of this lack, waiting lists increase dangerously and our quality of life worsens (to which is added that we live longer and longer).
The Ministry of Health itself recognizes that there is a lack of doctors, not just a few, no, the forecast is that in 2027 the deficit will reach 9,000. This year, 3,660 first-year places have been announced in medical schools. Why don’t they call more? Taking into account that a doctor does not improvise, and that he needs a few years of training, this is going to get worse. This is a state question. In the January MIR exam, 8,772 places were offered for 13,990 applicants (and not all of them are filled). Why don’t they offer more? As if that were not enough, as they are poorly paid and a third do not have a permanent position, nearly 1,800 doctors leave each year to practice in other countries and this worsens the deficit we are carrying.
Julius Caesar launched a talent attraction program (that also comes from the Romans) to attract doctors to Rome. We don’t even that. In the end, faced with so much accumulated inefficiency on the part of political leaders and rectors, we will end up begging: “Is there a doctor in the room?”
