INTRODUCTION
I have decided to write about doctors because they are
professionals that instead of being worried about themselves, they worry about
us. Also, I have focused on the Intensive Care Units, also known as ICU.
I had the idea after interviewing Dr. Carlos F, boss of
the ICU in the Clinic Hospital of Barcelona, one of the most prestigious hospitals
in Europe, and with Marcos’ Dad, our school partner.
We are going to talk about the following aspects of the
medicine in this article:
The Spanish Health System, The medicine specialties, the ICUs
and the interview with Dr. Carlos F.
Dr. Carlos F
THE
SPANISH HEALTH SYSTEM
The Spanish Health system has three characteristics:
1-
It is a universal system ( every Spanish inhabitant
has the right to be looked after )
2-
There is a network of centres of primary attention
(known in Cataluña as CAPs) and,
3-
They have a system for public health and a private
one.
THE MEDICINE SPECIALITIES
In Spain, there are 3.8 doctors for every 1.000
habitants. This is a low number compared to neighboring countries like France
where there are more than 10/1.000 ratio.
There are 790 hospitals, of which
340 are public. 158.000 beds (297 per habitant), of which 4.404 are ICU beds.
In Spain, there are more
than 30 health specialties, including diagnostical specialties.
THE ICU
The Intensive
Care Unit is one special installation inside the hospital that ensures intensive
medicine. When patients enter intensive care, they have a bad condition of health
that puts their lives at risk and one that requires constant monitoring of their
vital signs and other parameters, like the liquid control.
The two important criteria
for the admission of patients into the ICU are one, to elevate the level of care
and two, be recoverable patients.
INTERVIEW WITH DR. CARLOS F
To know more
about the intensive care unit, I have interviewed Dr. Carlos F.
Q: Can you tell us your specialty and where do you
work?
A: I am an anesthetist
and I work in the Clinic Hospital of Barcelona. One of the 20 best hospitals in
the world. I am the boss of the ICU of the Hospital. What we do here is receive
patients that are very sick. Half of them come out of important surgeries,
others come from accidents.
Q: When you were a child did you want to become a
doctor?
A: From very
young, I wanted to become a doctor because almost all my family were on the
sanitary branch. When I was your age, I started to read things about medicine.
Q: Was it very difficult to study medicine?
A: The
difficult thing about medicine is not the university. There are more difficult universities
like Engineering. The difficult thing is to enter the university. There are only
a few places for a lot of candidates. You need to study a lot before the
university, to have a great degree, and enter the medical university. During university,
you need to dedicate study hours. If you study and you know the theory, in the
exams you will do it great. It´s not like in engineering where they give you a
problem and for all that you have study, maybe you answer it wrong.
Q: Can you describe an ICU unit?
A: It’s like a
big stage with closed bedrooms. Everyone for a patient and it looks like an airplane
cabin. There is one bed and a lot of screens. With that, we can see everything
that occurs to the patient, externally and internally. In the head, the heart…We
have all the body monitored. A lot of the patients are anesthetized. We put
stickers on the face to know how much asleep they are having. We measure how the
heart works. The heart carries the blood with oxygen to all the parts of the
body. We measure the oxygen that goes to the cells. We measure how the lungs
are breeding. We measure how the kidney works…
Q: What does your day look like?
A: We work from
8:00 am to 16:00, except the ward days in which we work 24 hours in a row.
At 8:00am, we
have a meeting in which we talk and discuss about all the patients we have. How
were the last 24 hours? What we are going to do with them? If we are going to
change something about the treatment? If we are going to let them breathe on
their own?
At 9:00 am, we
visit them.
At 12:00, we have
another meeting, when we go all together bedroom per bedroom together with the
nurses and we share opinions. The opinion of a doctor can be wrong but when a
lot of doctors think together, it is more difficult to do mistakes.
At 14:00, we
inform families.
When we finish,
we write and describe what we have done with all the patients.
We are one
doctor for every 3 or 4 patients. In the ICU Clinic, we have 48 beds.
Q: Have you had a lot of changes in your every day
with the COVID 19?
A: A lot. For
you to have an idea, we usually have 48 beds in the ICU. Over these three
months, we have increased from 48 to 170 beds. We multiplied per three. With
patients extremely sick, there was no treatment. It was only vital support.
Q: Now, is it getting better?
A: A lot better
than before. Now, we have come back to the 48 beds of ICU that we have and we don´t
have any more patients with coronavirus. Before we had 160 patients, all of
them of with coronavirus. Now, zero.
That has been
thanks to social distancing and good weather.
Q: You think that we will overcome this pandemic?
A: Of course,
like we have overcome others. In fact, we already defeated it. The important
thing is that it will not happen again. We are more prepared.
CONCLUSION
The ICUs are
the last layer to save lives.
Despite having less than
5.000 beds in the ICU. Spain has defeated this terrible pandemic of COVID 19
and that has been possible thanks to excellent professionals like Dr. Carlos F
and our great health system.
