The Supreme Court has accepted the appeal filed by the Illustrious College of Physicians of Madrid (Icomem) and provisionally suspends the issuance of emergency and emergency medical specialist qualifications. This process had begun last October.
The reason for its suspension is that one of the points of the Royal Decree creating this specialty – which details the requirements for extraordinary access to the title – leaves out medical graduates after January 1995 who do not have a specialty.
Until that year in Spain, all those who had a degree in Medicine could practice as general practitioners, regardless of whether they had later specialized through the MIR or another route. Later, this possibility was eliminated and those who were already doctors, did not have a specialty and worked within the National Health System were forced to specialize through the Specialized Health Training exam.
This part has been denounced by both the Madrid and Barcelona Colleges of Physicians. Also the Spanish Association of General Physicians. There are many doctors who work in the emergency room and do not have any specialty. These, as Royal Decree 610/2024 is constructed today, cannot request the homologation of their title unlike those who are specialists and meet the minimum requirements for time worked in these services.
Likewise, this precautionary suspension does not affect the previous phases of the direct access procedure (collect certificates, present applications and issue proposal reports). Only the part referring to the “issuance of specialist titles” is stopped.
Given the possibility that those who cannot access them will begin to be dispensed with, the Supreme Court has communicated “the suspension in the terms set out to prevent, as a consequence of numerous acts of cessation and, furthermore, dictated by different health administrations, generalizes a situation of legal uncertainty and conflict,” according to the order.
Last July, the Council of Ministers approved the Royal Decree creating this specialty. Their training would have a minimum duration of four years (the first two common to the branch of Family and Community Medicine). Until now, services in Hospital Emergency Rooms and Emergencies were carried out by health workers with different titles.
According to the latest data from the Ministry of Health, in 2022 there were 22,750 consultations in hospital emergencies (mostly in the Community of Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia). Furthermore, 10.8% ended in income.
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