Enamed revealed that a third of the doctors evaluated did not demonstrate minimum knowledge to practice the profession, exposing a structural crisis in medical training in Brazil
Would you trust the life of your child, your mother or your father to a doctor who was unable to demonstrate minimal knowledge in a basic medical exam?
The question seems harsh, almost unfair. But it imposes itself when we look at the data from ENAMED, National Medical Training Assessment Examination.
Because, in the end, it’s not about proof. It’s about trust.
Enamed was not created to embarrass doctors or to humiliate those at the top. It exists to measure something very simple: the real quality of medical education offered in the country.
And what he revealed should embarrass the system more than the student.
Around 33% of the doctors evaluated did not pass the test, even though they already had CRM and were working.
Last year, Brazil trained approximately 40 thousand doctors. Of these, around 13 thousand did not demonstrate the minimum knowledge expected to practice medicine safely.
Here it is worth a pause.
This is not statistics. It’s people serving people.
There is also a psychological impact that is little discussed. The moment of urgency in health is, by definition, a moment of vulnerability.
The patient arrives fragile, afraid, looking for someone to guide difficult decisions when he himself cannot think clearly.
When this security is broken, the effect is not just clinical. It’s emotional.
Insecurity in care increases anxiety, feelings of helplessness and loss of control.
On the other hand, many newly graduated doctors also arrive insecure, aware of the gaps in their own training, pressured to make quick decisions without the necessary practical basis.
A poorly performing system does not just produce technical errors. It produces fear on both sides of the stretcher.
When someone enters an emergency room, they don’t want to know if the college saved money on laboratories, if there was a lack of preceptors or if the course opened too quickly.
He wants to know if he will make it out alive.
We want to know if, in the face of a cardiorespiratory arrest, someone will try to resuscitate or just spread the blanket after death, as we recently saw in a case that shocked the country.
The problem is not the student.
The problem is the system that authorized this training.
Today, Brazil has 351 medical courses, almost double the number in the United States, even with a smaller population and a much more unequal hospital network.
Still, 30% of these courses were rejected by the MEC.
Only 49 universities managed to achieve the maximum score.
On the other hand, 87% of federal courses received high grades, 4 or 5.
On the other hand, among private for-profit institutions, 60% did not even reach the minimum required.
Course without teaching hospital.
Course without field of practice.
Course without adequate supervision.
That doesn’t make a doctor. Form diploma.
Faced with this scenario, a politically elegant solution emerges: the so-called OAB of medicine.
A final exam that conditions the CRM for approval.
It seems firm.
Seems responsible.
It looks like action.
But let’s be honest?
It’s the most comfortable way out.
It creates a barrier for the student, but does not close down a bad college.
It does not prevent courses without a teaching hospital.
It does not hold responsible those who profited from doing wrong.
The institution continues to make money, the market for preparatory courses grows and the blame is outsourced to those who have already been harmed by the training.
Closing the course results in conflict.
Reviewing authorizations affects gigantic economic interests.
Creating a medical OAB transfers responsibility and “solves” the problem… in speech.
Politically, it’s easier.
Technically, it is insufficient.
Ethically, it is debatable.
We all want doctors to be prepared when we call SAMU, when we enter an emergency room, when we hand over the lives of those we love into the hands of a stranger.
We want someone capable of recognizing that there is still a chance for life.
If the intention is to protect patients, the solutions are less popular but much more effective.
Close courses with recurring poor performance.
Prevent new colleges without a school clinic.
Reduce vacancies without practice field.
Hold those who do wrong responsible.
Because health does not allow improvisation.
Because medical errors don’t become graphic.
It doesn’t turn into a technical debate.
It doesn’t become a number.
Medical error becomes a family story.
*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Jovem Pan.
