the medical board of directors met on good friday / d. ripoll
On Good Friday, after two years and a month without full presence, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of La Plata (UNLP), Juan Ángel Basualdo Farjat, signed an agreement with representatives of the student body who promised to provide a solution to a long list of demands: among them, to resume face-to-face courses and practices suspended since the coronavirus quarantine was decreed, back in March 2020. It was that electoral campaign commitment, assumed during the holiday and when 60 and 120 was a desert, the one that assured Basualdo the renewal of his mandate.
Votes and demands
The doctor, who for his re-election needed the support of 11 (out of 16) directors, had reached the Friday session with 8 votes: that of the 7 professors (where a single list won the faculty elections with a third of votes blank) and that of the non-teacher. He was still missing 3. He knew that this accompaniment would not come from the graduates (openly opposed to management). He then had to “recover” the adherence of the students of Remediar (a Peronist group that runs the student center and has the majority of the faculty) and of the minority front that make up Patria Grande and the PCR, who after having welcomed the inauguration in 2018 de Basualdo had been adding criticism, mainly for his management during and after the pandemic. So much so that (like the graduates) they missed the first call of the board of directors to elect authorities and put a “price” on their votes: the promise of the future dean to comply with an extensive list of conditions that on Friday, after two failed sessions and minutes before the last council meeting, he ended up signing. With this heading, the 5 student delegates understood that there were no reasons to oppose and decided to raise their hands for a management that, as they stated in their list of demands, did not accompany the growth in enrollment with a larger budget (until 2015, when the eliminatory entrance was maintained, Medicine did not receive more than 500 students per year; for this cycle more than 8,000 were registered).
“The Faculty has become the largest in the UNLP, with more than 30,000 students. However, such growth has not been accompanied by the same expansion in the teaching staff, non-teaching staff and infrastructure”, warns in its first paragraphs the 31-page text that the students discussed in assemblies and elevated him to the now re-elected dean.
The need for greater and better infrastructure, expansion and access to the equipment of the chairs, adding classrooms, teaching staff and the guarantee that the current capacity of 50 percent will go (as in the most severe times of the pandemic) to the complete presence in all years stand out among the conditions that the student body listed to vote Basualdo again at the head of Medicine.
Regarding the practices that in the last two years were replaced by virtuality, the document prepared by the students warns: “We are concerned about how this will affect our training as future health professionals” and then admit: “We know that the instance of the compulsory final practice (which takes place at the end of the degree) is not enough to recover the contents not given during the virtual course”. For this reason, they conclude, “we have the obligation, responsibility and vocation to recover lost knowledge, generate abilities and skills”.
see patients again
From 1st to 5th year, Medicine careers maintain distance education even in 2022, when the rest of the faculties, educational levels and activities in general lifted the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. That is why the insistence to return to the classroom, to “touch” the anatomical preparations, look through the microscope or resume contact with patients in hospitals, something that virtuality cannot replace.
The text of the students also includes a paragraph to the admission course and asks that it be “planned”. That instance, which was previously eliminatory, is now introductory and this year, together with a greater flow of students, it was doubly affected by the delay in paying tutors and the resignation of the course coordinator, who left office last week. between harsh criticism of the management.
On Friday, Basualdo promised to walk the path of solving the problems raised by the students, who also demanded that he modify the academic management (“the area was not up to the task of resolving the student demands,” they warned). . Will the dean make changes to the team driving him? “These data or the resolutions are not there,” they limited themselves to saying in 60 and 120, while from the student body they told this newspaper that, “as far as is known, the same Academic Secretary continues.”
without the graduates
That was not an impediment so that finally the five councilors for the students ended up re-electing the dean who promised them to comply with the required demands and thus was able to garner 13 votes, of the 11 he needed, to rule in Medicine until 2026. As was said, for Basualdo lacked the unanimous endorsement of the support of the University Convergence graduates, who after being absent twice ended up sitting down on Friday to present their candidate, cardiologist Marcelo Uriarte (who obtained 3 votes from the opposition caucus).
“We do not support the re-election of the current dean, understanding that a job must be carried out that in the future guarantees an inter-faculty alternative to the current leadership,” explained in a statement the representatives of the Medicine graduates, who promised to participate “in the management control” and they summoned the rest of the cloisters for that.
Students, “concerned” about the impact of virtuality on their training