Luis Herrador: “The family doctor is an equal specialist”

Luis Herrador (27 years old, Castellón) is in his sixth year of medicine at URV and preparing for MIR. Starting in June, he will embark on “seven intensive months, with twelve hours of study a day, Monday through Friday, rehearsals on Saturday and rest on Sunday” to get the best possible place in the exam, which will take place in January. He wants to specialize in family medicine.

Why medicine?

I started studying biotechnology in Valencia, but in my third year, I saw that what I liked the most was the clinical part of medicine. I did eclecticism again, got noticed and got into medicine. This is where I discovered my passion. I had to err to realize what I really liked.

Why family medicine?

Because it is ultimately a compendium of almost all disciplines. You can be in contact with the patient throughout his life, with his family, follow him, and you know his psychological and social side. You do not see a disease but rather the disease within the human being. In addition, it is a very complete specialization and allows you to go as far as you like. For example, if you want to practice doing an ultrasound or dealing with the dermatology part, you can. It is often underrated, but the specialty is the best representation of the doctor’s personality that we all have in mind.

In the middle of the studies, Covid broke out. How did you try it? What scenario will you find?

I think that Covid, in the end, will be a contagious respiratory disease, like the others. I hope it is, that we end up normalizing it. We have the vaccine, with the spread we’ve done testing and PCR. I think we’ll tend to live with that, and things won’t change much. Not because it’s Covid but because it’s a new disease we didn’t know very well what to do with it and we didn’t have a protocol. As doctors, we have to know that to know how to deal with it.

What do you want to contribute when you exercise?

Service to the community. I think it’s an altruistic profession and it’s about giving back everything that society has invested in you, in so many years of education and internships and contributing to health. This is also why I love Familia, to take care of society, anticipate some diseases that may appear, eliminate risk factors and contribute to a more functional and happier life.

Does the situation in which health scare you?

It is an issue that needs to be resolved. Above all, as MIR, it is correct that salaries should be increased because they receive €1,000 and this cannot be the minimum wage. We’ve studied for six years, we’ve weathered a very tough opposition and we have a great care burden, very long hours, 24-hour guards, and it’s not fair to have such low salaries. I have many friends who have traveled abroad because the departmental acknowledgment here is not what it should be. On the part of the citizens, the fact is that they know that they have good doctors.

The family doctor, who solves almost everything for us, is sometimes the least appreciated.

90% of consultations are done in primary care and they are the people who often work out things or decide who to refer you to and when to do it. Many people think that they are doctors who do not have a specialty. It is not so, the specialty of family medicine has been going on for decades and they are doctors just like the ones you could find in a hospital.