Providing courage, balance and humanity in the emergency services

Nacho Vallejo
 

@varelalaf

Urgency is a unique environment in healthcare. It works intending to deal with situations that can put the person's life at risk, but it’s also a "safety net" or, as we have defined it on some occasion in this blog, "a refugee camp of the health system". The care for people in this field of health isn’t only due to pathological and physiological disorders, but sometimes those who go to the emergency room do so as a consequence of dysfunction of our healthcare system that manifests itself with "collateral damage" derived from poor accessibility and, in other cases, from an excess of activity.

"Our" patient experience

Paco Miralles

In a recent friends meeting, we discussed the issue of health and the quality of health care services. My friends, as users of the health care system, both public and private, related their real patient experiences, experiences that on many occasions were far from the parameters that we strive for. Once again I thought that we do many things for patients, but without counting them in (the patient in focus?).

Artificial Intelligence: an opportunity for a more humane medicine?

Jordi Varela
Editor

Changing doctors for robots is a recurring theme in science fiction, but the appearance of devices with digital assistance, such as Alexa or Siri, and the promotion of self-care through smartphones, admitted The Lancet in an editorial, now seems a plausible reality. On the other hand, Harvard Medical School Professor Warner Slack said that if a doctor can be replaced by a computer, then this doctor deserves to be replaced by a computer. In this context, Eric Topol in "Deep Medicine" brings light to this debate with the defence of an open thesis: "artificial intelligence (AI), instead of replacing doctors, should become an aid for them to recover lost humanism."

Who does what? We redefine the roles of healthcare professionals

Cristina Adroher

One of the ideas that have been more repeated recently in the health care sector is that there is a lack of professionals. A recently published study shows that in Catalonia, until next 2023, 2,571 doctors and 3,263 nurses will be lacking to cover the population's care needs. This lack is especially marked in certain specialities (primary care) and rural areas. Seemingly not enough professionals are being recruited to face the projected demographic change. It is estimated that by 2030, Spain will be the fourth country in the world with the highest average age in the population as a whole (50.1) and that in 2050, people over 65 will represent more than a third of the total Spanish population. It's reasonable to assume that the ageing of the population will lead to an increase in the need for health care and social resources.