Seguridad social

This morning Dr. Casas introduced me to Franco, a med student from UPAEP which is another medical school in Puebla. He's a year younger than me and already done with his med school classes...what!?! In Mexico (or at least the local med schools) the students skip undergrad and go straight into med school which is 4 years of classes, a year of service in a rural area, and a year of clinical "preinterno." Because there is such a huge shortage of doctors here,  medical education is condensed and schools are turning out young doctors as fast as they possibly can. And of course with four less years of university tuition, training a doctor in Mexico is much cheaper than in the U.S.

We went to the seguridad social clinic in Puebla today. It's very similar to the health department at home and accepts patients who have state insurance or welfare. There were alot of patients waiting and alot of doctors doing consults, but for every patient that was seen, three more would get in line. It was like an assembly line. The doctor we shadowed works 7 to 8 hour shifts. He has roughly 50 patients a day. He has exactly 10 minutes per patient and he was staying on schedule. I asked Franco what would happen if he got behind with 50 patients in one day. He would get fired. At home most family practice doctors get 15 or 20 minutes with a patient, and that's not alot. At seguridad social the doctor rarely touched a patient, in fact I think He got up from his chair once while we were there. The patient would be called in, sit down, tell him why they were there, he would prescribe a medication and write a receipt, and then would be on to the next patient.

Most of the patients were diabetic. Diabetes is the most common disease in Mexico because so many Mexicans can't afford nutritious food. It's sad to me that the U.S. has many of the same health problems as Mexico, diabetes for example. But Americans are diabetic because they can afford healthy food but choose to eat unhealthy food. Living in another culture really helps you appreciate the things you take for granted.