Unanimity. The Governing Council of the Miguel Hernandez University (UMH) of elche has approved this noon, without votes against, taking to court the creation of Medicine in the University of Alicante (AU). In the next few days, always before October 16, when the deadline to do so expires, the UMH will file a contentious-administrative appeal against the decree of the Consell of August 5 of this year by which the implantation of the degree of Medicine in the UA was approved with the aim of paralyzing its implementation.
An unprecedented decision that confronts the two public universities of the province. The Governing Council of the UMH, which has, among other members, the rector, Juanjo Ruizthe vice-chancellors or the Student Delegation, has followed, as expected, the indications of the Social Council that met last week and approved “urging” the academic institution “to file the resources and initiate the legal actions that proceed for the defense of the quality of teaching in Medicine in the province of Alicante and in particular the defense of the interests of the students of our Medicine degree, in relation to the implantation of a new degree in the province”. Not only the Social Council, the Student Delegation and the Medicine Delegation had also supported the filing an appeal against the degree at the University of Alicante.
The governing bodies of the university in Elche have repeatedly moved, since the Generalitat’s decision to recover these studies for the University of Alicante, from which they were separated to create the Miguel Hernández University in 1996, that were adamantly against it because, they allege, endangers the excellence and quality of the degree that is taught there. Even Ruiz branded as “populist impulse” that Medicine is implanted in the UA from the 2023/2024 academic year. Curiously, it was the same expression used by the head of the Consell, Ximo Puig, last week when he thanked the City Council for understanding, and specifically the mayor Carlos Gonzalez, after abstaining in the Social Council of the UMH to urge the university to file an appeal because, he pointed out “it is very easy to fall down the slide of populism”. Puig also asked the UMH for collaboration since “universities are there to cooperate, not to confront.”
However, his attempts to prevent the matter from going to court have been in vain. He does not convince the UMH of his maxim that “we need more doctors to strengthen the public health system and because there is an increasing demand.” The implantation of the degree of Medicine in the campus of the UA of San Vicente del Raspeig, very close, less than ten minutes by car, to Sant Joan, where the UMH teaches this degree, will affect the quality of internships carried out by the medical students of the province and the implication that it can have in the quality of care, they justify from the university of Elche, which assures that there are not enough teachers or means for two races of such magnitude.
While from the UMH they qualify as “waste” The new degree in Medicine at the UA, at the University of Alicante, considers, on the other hand, that the implementation of the degree supposes a “great opportunity” to strengthen education in the health field and to promote synergies that position the province as a “research pole” in the medical field. The recovery of this degree at the UA will add 75 places to the university offer of these studies in the Valencian Community and increase it by 10%. However, the rector of the UMH insisted at the beginning of this course that what is needed are more MIR vacancies to maintain public health to give more opportunities in the public system to all who have been trained, citing that the “new and expensive degree” goes against the express opinion of the deans and the national conference and other medical organizations .
The deadlines are very fair. The limit to appeal the decree of the Consell ends on October 16, so the UMH has three working days, not counting Wednesday, which is a holiday, to file the contentious-administrative appeal in the courts of Elche. Meanwhile, as this newspaper published, various sources from the academic institution point out that that possible judicial action would already be preparing for days to have it ready in case it was required. In this sense, it is the Advocacy Service of the UMH itself the person in charge of substantiating the defense of its interests, all this after providing legal advice to the different university bodies before making decisions.
From the UMH it is considered that the Consell has broken the deck by not having waited to announce the implementation of Medicine in the university of Alicante to the launch of the claimed and promised Map of Qualifications of the Valencian Community that the Ministry of Innovation and Universities, directed by the Alicante Josephine Goodis still not approved and whose objective is to “order and put common sense” into the geographical distribution of degrees, Juanjo Ruiz recalled last summer.
student body
For their part, the representatives of the student body of the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) have been some of the most critics with the implementation of the Medicine degree at the UA. They are part of the Governing Council of the UMH and their vote has been a resounding yes to going to court to paralyze the implementation of the Medicine degree in the University of Alicante (AU), when considering “harmful” both for students and for the public health system. They argue that the students are already saturated in the different medical centers where they carry out their internships from second to sixth year. For this reason, they explain that adding a new faculty would imply worsening this situation and extending this problem to other health centers.
The decision, they say, to implement the degree “Not only is it not a benefit for patients, but it can harm their privacy and, with it, the doctor-patient relationship.” This concern arises after the words of the former Minister of Health, Ana Barcelo, that they will negotiate places in hospitals with the UMH. The students regret that Barceló “was unaware” of Royal Decree 1588/1986, which cites that a university hospital may only be linked by concert or agreement to a single university for the delivery of the same degree.
Therefore, they consider that these intentions would imply a loss of agreements currently available in hospitals that have all or most of the clinical specialties (Alicante General Hospital Doctor Balmis and the Elche General Hospital). “This would mean saturating one of these two centers to incorporate the 75 students from the UA, and the other for the 130 from the UMH”, assure the representatives of the student body of the university of Elche. In addition, they assure that the study plan presented to ANECA in 2018 would be breached.
They are also skeptical about the words of the current Minister of Health, Miguel Minguez, “even if it were from his opinion” that implementing this degree “would comply with the wishes of the Ministry of Health”. From the Student Delegation they believe that the main thing is to satisfy the quality of patient care, and not increase student places without sufficient resources for it. They affirm that “quality must prevail over quantity”, and they urge the Ministry of Health to increase MIR positions “and not further increase the surplus of graduates.”
They also take refuge in requesting said resource, and qualifying the degree of “unnecessary”, in that neither from the State Council of Medical Students (CEEM) or any other member entity of the Forum of the Medical Profession, they assure, have claimed to increase the number of squares. “On the contrary”, they insist, and believe that there is “overpopulation” of graduates having grown by 66% the number of medical schools, mainly in private universities in recent years, but only 16% MIR vacancies.
In addition to this, they point out that many politicians have assumed that many doctors will retire in the province in the coming years, which will imply a deficit. Regarding this, they point out, in the first place, that the retirement of many specialists will imply “a shortage in the number of MIR tutors”, and also that the pool of them is national and not provincial. In addition, they say, “this period is temporary, and not permanent.”
Therefore, they consider the implementation of this degree at the UA as “a public waste, and not an investment”. The students consider that it would be much more convenient to invest these resources in improving the teaching of medicine in the other public universities of the Community “or, better still, allocate them to improve the conditions of the health centers of the province”.
insufficient facilities
The UMH Student Delegation casts doubt on the quality of said degree by assuring that there are not enough facilities for it. “It is seen that the Nursing students of the UA carry out their anatomy practices in the facilities of the UMH”, they point out as an example. In addition, they point out that the hospital with which, supposedly, they have an agreement is the one in Torrevieja, which is no longer managed by the company with which they signed the agreement, the Ribera Salud Group, but rather publicly owned. “A center that stands out for having its patients with long waiting hours, and even degrading treatment,” the student representatives said in a statement.
From the Student Delegation they believe that this degree presents numerous questions that cast doubt “after an in-depth analysis of the record of said degree” such as, for example, “that the report issued by ANECA was from the year 2018, or that the rector of back then, Manuel Palomar, would renounce its implementation for that same year”.
They regret that, in their opinion, the implementation of this degree has been used “for partisan purposes and that at no time have weighty and realistic technical arguments been given,” after seeing how last April some leaders of various political groups pointed to this news as “an act of justice to recover what was taken from the AU”. “Many members of the current university community did not participate in it, or directly, they were not even born,” they add.
Finally, they criticize the Department of Universities for not having taken them into account in the negotiationswhich they accuse of “not having been sensitive” to the province’s medical students. They also regret that the rectorates have not proposed to them to participate in the negotiations. They affirm that they are the main group affected, and claim to be heard.