Training programs in family medicine in Latin America

• Autor(a) principal: Ruilova, Gabriela Armijos
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Caspi, Luisa Vaca, García, Luis Aguilera, Vicente, Verónica Casado, Hierro, Galo Sánchez del, Durán, Susana Alvear
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: spa
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Medicina de Família e Comunidade (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.rbmfc.org.br/rbmfc/article/view/1278
• topic: Medicina Familiar Y Comunitaria. Programas de Capacitación. Educación Basada en Competencias. Residencia Médica; Medicina de Família e Comunidade. Programas de Treinamento. Educação Baseada em Competências. Residência Médica

In the 21st century, health systems wanted to strengthen their structure and operation by focusing on a wstrategy of Primary Health Care through high-quality human resources. Ambitious policies are needed in the training of competent and sufficient human resources to align health systems based on these strategic values. Family Medicine is the axis that allows health system strengthening by providing healing-oriented, comprehensive and continuous healthcare, with health promotion, disease prevention and the provision of services across various levels of care.The family doctor goes through residency training before going into practice. In Latin America there are few residences in Family Medicine, and many programs do not provide the quality needed to form competitive medical human resources. The response of academic institutions in most Latin American countries has been very diverse; and in some cases they served to bridge the gap between the need for personnel and the training offered, due to the political and governmental urgency. This article wants to show the relevance of training programs in Latin America. Methods: A literature search was performed in multiple virtual libraries and gray literature of scientific societies. Data were collected from opinion leaders in the “Fifth Iberoamerican Summit of Family Medicine” held in Quito, Ecuador, in April 2014. Results: The following data were obtained: Training in Family Medicine in Latin American countries varies between 2 and 4 years; 61% of countries (11 of 18) offer 3 years of training, 22.2% four years, and 11% 2 years (Cuba and Venezuela); in 63.6% (7 of 11 countries), the degree of Family Medicine is required for practice. Conclusions: In Latin America, residency  programs in family medicine aimed to correct deficiencies in the training that had been present in general practitioners and to close the gap to meet the public health need. However, these programs still lack many elements of family medicine training to reach worldwide standardized competencies. Furthermore, if the training programs are not training to competency and if their requirements are not based on international standards, then the resulting training does uality physicians, capable of resolving 80% of the medical problems that patients present to them.