Concluding a week of nationwide strikes, Teachers have blocked the Ronda de Dalt ring road at several points this morningShortly before 7:00 a.m., approximately 400 people blocked traffic in both directions in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, just before the La Trinitat interchange. Later, about 100 protesters blocked the same road near Vall d'Hebron Hospital, followed by another blockade on the B-20 highway near Finestrelles, in Esplu. This action is a response to the agreement the government reached two weeks ago with the CCOO and UGT unions, presented as a "national pact," but which did not receive the support of Ustec, the largest union in the education sector, or the Secondary School Teachers' Union, the largest union in secondary schools.

Alba Cuberas, a family doctor at the Manresa-4 Primary Care Center (CAP), sees a patient with intense back pain. She gives him a short sick leave and anti-inflammatory medication, but there is no improvement. With an X-ray, the rheumatologist recommends rehabilitation. "But nobody calls him. I see him once a month, and he's told me two months ago that he hasn't started the sessions," she says. In Sant Pol de Mar, Martín Cebollada suspects a patient may have a herniated disc and, to be sure, orders a CT scan. The wait is six months. "But he has debilitating pain, and I can't know for sure how serious it is; he can't go to work," he states. At the Manso Primary Care Center (CAP) in Barcelona, ​​Eva Segura is monitoring a patient on sick leave for severe depression, with a history of suicide attempts. In the fourth month, she receives the first discharge proposal from the insurance company, but she has just started psychiatric treatment, and the doctor rejects it. In the fifth month, the same request arrives, and she rejects it again. This happens four times. But against her advice (and that of the psychiatrist), the Catalan Institute of Medical Assessments (ICAM) sends the patient back to work, and the company, shortly afterward, declares her unfit. "She loses her job, and her health deteriorates significantly," she explains.

The healthcare system is one of the most complex and successful achievements of democratic societies. Complex because knowledge, and consequently the capacity to treat illnesses, is constantly evolving for the benefit of us all, and also because those of us who are part of the healthcare system sometimes speak indecipherable jargon. Furthermore, healthcare activity indicators are not easy to interpret in their entirety. We must acknowledge that today we have more information than we are capable of processing to draw the necessary conclusions and adjustments.

The Supreme Court has ordered two gynecologists to pay €35,000 in damages to a patient for using forceps and vacuum extraction during her delivery without her consent or prior notification. The ruling clarifies that, even without medical negligence, the failure to inform her beforehand about the instruments to be used and the associated risks violated her right to informed consent. The woman who brought the case to the Supreme Court to establish this precedent was 29 years old in March 2014 when she gave birth to her son in a Madrid hospital. She had received prenatal care at the same hospital in the preceding months, and all tests had come back normal. After three hours of contractions, the doctors attending her during the delivery used a vacuum extractor and forceps to deliver the baby. The postpartum period in the hospital went well, and after a few days, the woman was discharged. However, a year later, she was still experiencing pain in the episiotomy scar from her delivery. After trying various treatments, the pelvic pain persisted, and when her son was three years old, she filed a malpractice lawsuit.

"It's been years, many meetings, many negotiation sessions, and a very complex text that hadn't been touched in 22 years," declared a relieved Health Minister Mónica García after announcing on Monday the agreement for a new Framework Statute for healthcare professionals. Several labor unions have signed the agreement, but not the medical unions. The Framework Statute is the law that regulates the working conditions of healthcare professionals throughout Spain, and its update has been one of Minister García's priorities this legislative term. There was a lot of back and forth between unions and management, strikes, and threats to end up putting the text in a drawer.Finally, an agreement has been reached with the unions SATSE-FSES, CCOO, UGT, and CSIF. However, the text—which must be approved by the Council of Ministers and subsequently processed as a law in the Congress of Deputies and the Senate—is flawed from the start, since It does not have the support of medical unionsThey have repeatedly demanded a single collective bargaining agreement that exclusively protects the working conditions of doctors. In fact, the national strike committee, comprised of the Spanish Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM), the Andalusian Medical Union (SMA), Doctors of Catalonia (MC), the Association of Doctors and Higher Graduates of Madrid (AMYTS), the Basque Medical Union (SME), and the Basque Country Medical Union (O'MEGA), has already announced a monthly strike day starting in February. The agreed-upon text ends 24-hour on-call shifts and reduces them to 17 hours, limits the weekly working hours to 45, regulates rest periods, and recognizes the right to work-life balance, among other improvements. "This is the broadest agreement reached to date for a statute of this kind in our national health system," the minister asserted, thanking the union representatives for their commitment, responsibility, and loyalty. García also highlighted the more than 60 meetings held to shape this agreement and expressed confidence that it will be approved, even though it must go through Congress and the Senate for processing.

Some medical terms are more difficult to understand than others, especially when discussing complex pathologies or rare tests. Children, however, may initially encounter this difficulty with even the most basic vocabulary, encompassing everyday health terms and related concepts. For this reason, medical vocabulary specialists from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona have collaborated with over 3,000 children and young people from schools and institutes throughout Catalonia to develop a platform to explain medical terms to children in their own words, using new digital and multimedia formats. This platform, called Diximed, is aimed at children and families, as well as pediatricians and educators. "You have to approach the child's needs, but keeping in mind a psycholinguistic theory that says nothing is learned in leaps and bounds, but always from what is already known. And if what a child knows is incorrect and no one explains it to them, they will always end up carrying that misconception," says Rosa Estopà, principal investigator of the Lex project, a research group at Iulaterm. To carry out this initiative, the participating children were asked to explain what they knew about certain words, such as flu, louse, vaccine, coronavirus, cancer either chickenpoxAmong many others, they were asked to draw them. "We told them they had to do it as if they were explaining it to a child their age who came from another planet," Estopà recalls.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming medicine at a speed unimaginable just a few years ago. It helps us analyze images with great precision, manage and analyze large volumes of data with agility, and advance research more quickly. It is a powerful tool that is already part of our present and will also shape the future of healthcare.

The Doctors of Catalonia union has taken a stand against the words of the Catalan Minister of Health, Olga Pané, who stated that artificial intelligence (AI) diagnoses better than healthcare professionals. In a message on social media, the union urged Pané to apologize and retract her statement. Specifically, the Minister of Health asserted the following: "[AI] diagnoses with an accuracy equal to or greater than that which we professionals ourselves can achieve." According to the union, Pané's statement is "completely unbecoming of a Minister of Health" and they believe that "she should not be able to say this without consequences." "A Minister cannot say this, because she is making her opinion of doctors very clear," stated the organization's general secretary, Xavier Lleonart. Furthermore, in the video they added that "in any normal country, she would at least issue an apology." Therefore, they demand that the councilor issue a public retraction and, failing that, they assert that they will be forced to formally request her dismissal.

There is neither a shortage of doctors nor a brain drain in the state. This is the assessment made by the Spanish Medical Association (OMC) after conducting a demographic study of the profession, contrary to what some have suggested. from the diagnosis carried out by other professional associationsUnions and scientific societies have been increasingly vocal in recent years, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic. While many stakeholders point out that doctors trained in Catalonia often go on to work in other countries or autonomous communities, the Spanish Medical Association maintains that Spain has a better number of physicians than other European countries and therefore argues that there is no shortage of professionals, but rather a need for better distribution across specialties. However, the study acknowledges the need to end job insecurity in the sector, improve continuing education for professionals, change the compensation model, and combat excessive workloads to make the national health system more attractive to new doctors.

Exactly seven days ago, the 23rd Medical Profession Conference was held at the Cerdà Museum in Puigcerdà as part of the Ramon Llull Summer University. The panelists were predominantly female physicians. In fact, in Catalonia, women are predominantly female in the medical profession, and among younger generations, the proportion is 70%. However, it wasn't until 2025 that a woman presided over one of the four Catalan medical associations for the first time. Specifically, this February 2025, Elvira Bisbe, an anesthesiologist at Hospital del Mar and until now vice president of the Barcelona Medical Association, marked a milestone by becoming the first female president of this association since its founding in 1894.

"The number of doctors will not increase, despite the waiting lists, despite the retirements, despite the layoffs, despite the lack of specialists. The new mantra of the regional ministry is that there is no shortage of doctors." This, which could be written today and would still be just as valid, I wrote on July 28, 2021, in an article titled Medicine without doctors published in this same newspaper.

The Salvador Illa government has set out to finally unblock the transformation of the healthcare system, which has been demanded for years from different spheres of the sector to ensure the sustainability of public healthcare. Professionals, scientific societies, unions, and employers' associations agree that urgent changes are needed to adapt the system to the current reality, with an aging and diverse society that has experienced significant economic and technological changes in recent decades. Therefore, they call for these reforms to be long-term and anticipate future problems and needs.

Open heart, Emergencies, Grey's Anatomy, Central Hospital, Doctor in Alaska, Doctor Martin…medical series are a genre of their own, well-established ones. Whether because viewers enjoy the heroic side of the profession or because they prefer the pool of doctors, they're a type of fiction that's constantly replenished with titles. Proof of this are the five new medical dramas that have been available on platforms for a few weeks now.

Absolute rejection by all primary care representatives of the measure proposed by the Catalan Health Institute (ICS) to grant financial incentives to doctors who process discharges for patients referred by mutual insurance companies. Colleges, scientific societies, and unions reacted this Monday against the proposal, which ultimately came to nothing after the ICS backed down. "There will be no objective designed to incentivize doctors to increase the number of discharges," stated sources from the company after the uproar.

Jan is already six months old, and his mother, Vanesa Gallego, returned to work a week ago. She's a doctor at a primary care center (CAP) in the public health system in a rural area; her regular schedule is Monday through Friday, followed by on-call duty on weekends. Before becoming pregnant with Jan, she had suffered six miscarriages and took sick leave in the fourth month of pregnancy; she didn't want to take any chances. From then until she gave birth, she estimates she's lost about €6,000 in salary, as the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) has only paid her for the days she would have worked during the week and has stopped paying her on-call duty, a large part of her salary. Although she has filed a complaint, she doesn't expect to recover that money.

The law that regulates the working conditions of health professionals in Spain has not been updated for 22 years and the Ministry of Health has been working for months on a new framework statute that must be presented this year. But the future regulation has raised a lot of dust and has unleashed weeks of back-and-forth and cross-criticism between the unions and the Spanish government. A month ago, representatives of doctors from all over the State demonstrated at the doors of the ministry in Madrid, and this Wednesday they have gone a step further to ask a unique statute that exclusively regulates the professional conditions of doctors, different from the rest of health professionals. Up to 16 organizations from Spain –most of them unions– have met in Barcelona to present the Professional Association for a Medical and Faculty Statute (APEMYF), a new formation that wants to be a tool of pressure and dialogue with the Spanish government to channel all medical demands.

The doctor Elvira Bisbe (Barcelona, ​​​​1961) will be the next president of the Barcelona College of Physicians (CoMB) and the first woman to hold the position. The until now vice president of the entity will lead it in the following four years after having presented the only candidacy to the elections to the governing board and delegates of the Assembly of Delegates within the deadline, which ended this Saturday at 2 p.m.

Jaume Padrós (Barcelona, ​​​​1959) has been president of the Barcelona College of Physicians (COMB) for the last 11 years. In this time, he has seen it all: a pandemic, strikes, demographic changes, therapeutic revolutions. He has also met eleven Ministers of Health and six Health Councillors. This expert in family and gerontological medicine was first elected in 2014 and was re-elected in 2018 and 2021, in the midst of the health crisis due to Covid.

Hospitals, both public and private, and primary care centres compete fiercely to recruit doctors and nurses. Their priority is to cover for the increasing number of staff on sick leave, as well as replace workers going on holiday. These professionals have been on the front line during the most dramatic moments of the pandemic. The problems is there are no more doctors and nurses to hire. And the professionals who are available will not accept the conditions offered to them, they are exhausted from stringing together temporary contracts or, having recently finished their training, they would rather start working when the summer is over.