Vertical internship, experiences from Holguin
The vertical internship is a modality used since the 2015-2016 academic year by the studies in Medicine in the Cuban province of Holguin; although the first experiences in this modality in the territory date back to the first years after the revolutionary triumph of January 1rst, 1959, at times when the country was left with few doctors due to the massive emigration of these professionals.
Dr. Yanet Pupo Estupiñán, who opted for this modality to become a first-degree specialist in Pediatric Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, commented on her experiences in the territory after almost a decade of operation.
“My experience with the vertical internship has been wonderful, I was able to train as a specialist and I have graduated more than a year ago, I am doing well in my job and I am motivated to work every day in the care and protection of children. I take on this experience with a great desire to do everything at hand for the health of my patients. I am currently working in the Intensive Care Unit of Octavio de la Concepción de la Pedraja children hospital. I chose the specialty because since the first year of my studies I was linked as a volunteer student assistant in the Intermediate Care service with my tutor, Dr. Marlina, so I was taking my first steps and motivating me for this specialty by working with children and seeing the work that is performed in these units.
Vertical internship, experiences from Holguin
“In the 2018-2019 academic year I started my vertical internship, where in the sixth year of the career you must rotate through the basic specialties, but when you verticalize you go directly to the service where you will develop the specialty and you are exempt from the other rotations. Training in this specialty has been very nice because it involves a lot of responsibility, dedication, dedication and aptitude. In addition, one stage of our training took place in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. This did not prevent us from achieving the teaching objectives and gaining the skills required by the specialty.
“Opting for the vertical internship is a very personal decision, taking into account that if you have well defined the decision of the specialty you arrive directly. With it you advance some time to your training and it takes you directly to what you enjoy doing, without underestimating that the rotations for specialties in the sixth year of the career are important, even when they expired during the undergraduate training.”
This modality is part of the specialization process from the student stage for those who stand out in the different medical branches, a profitable initiative that contributes to meet the needs of anemic specialties in the territories.
Vertical internship, experiences from Holguin
According to Dr. George Augusto Velázquez Zúñiga, dean of the Mariana Grajales Coello School of Medical Sciences, “this was a strategy employed for the first time by the Ministry of Public Health, which is not exclusive to Cuba, as it has been previously applied worldwide. In the particular case of Holguín it was resumed in the 2015-2016 course with 10 specialties and 30 students. Today it has grown in number to find more than 270 students incorporated to the vertical internship, in more than thirty specialties”.
This allows students with outstanding training, as student assistants, who in their sixth year are linked to the training of a specialty to choose this option.
Dr. José Leandro Perez Guerrero
Dr. José Leandro Pérez Guerrero, specialist in Cardiology, trained with the vertical internship. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee
Such was the case of Dr. José Leandro Pérez Guerrero, current first degree specialist in Cardiology who became a specialist thanks to the vertical internship: “I had the privilege of choosing this modality that seeks to advance in time the training of specialists. It has been a very good experience because you can see the fruits of all the effort that each doctor has to make to train by overcoming the relevant content and skills in each year of the residency.
“This necessarily implies sacrifice, losing hours of sleep and rest, giving up things that young people normally do. I consider that it is a way to obtain the specialty one wants and it is applied in the province with good results because we are trained with good quality, with the same faculty and in the same healthcare scenarios as those who choose the traditional way of becoming cardiologists, after studying medicine. Due to its results, this experience has been generalized to other specialties and, like me, many have been well trained”.
Among the advantages of this training modality is that the student joins a specialty more quickly and finishes it in less time, without detracting from the quality of his or her training.
Thus, to date, positive results have been observed with an upward process, increasing the number of specialties and the number of students who opt for this opportunity for self-improvement. Hence the incentive to train vertical interns in those branches where specialists are required in a shorter period of time.
Holguin Specialist, Vertical Internship
Wilber Jesús Riverón Carralero, managed to become a first degree specialist in Internal Medicine through the vertical internship.
“I am currently working at the Lucía Íñiguez Landín Clinical Surgical Hospital in that service. I believe that this option rather reinforces the knowledge because it bets on the continuation of the Mario Muñoz Monroy student assistant movement, which I was from the second year and that is why I decided to opt for the specialty and achieve a training that although it is more accelerated, it will not make it difficult for me to acquire knowledge in other specialties because what the vertical internship aims is to graduate a specialist as young, active and capable as possible for his development in society”.
In addition to Pediatrics, Cardiology and Internal Medicine, this option includes, among others, specialties such as Gynecobstetrics, Orthopedics, Anesthesia and Intensive Care, which need a young force, thus increasing the professional and generational relay. The province of Holguin is among the territories of the country that covers more vertical internship places and where more specialists graduate by this way.
As part of a more advanced stage of this modality, medical students from the fourth year are given a first proposal of specialties, taking into account their assistantship from the second year.
Then, upon graduating in the sixth year, they become a Comprehensive General Practitioner with a verticalization in the specialty, which continues in the future, in a shorter time than the one obtained after graduation.
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