A few weeks ago I had a serious health problem and this has allowed me cross that abyss that separates the physician or biomedical researcher with respect to patient, the person suffering from a disease. First of all I would like to highlight the immense fortune of enjoying a public, universal and quality health system. Despite the various economic crises suffered, our hospitals continue to offer an excellent health service. The same diagnostic and treatment techniques used in my case, if I had to pay them exclusively privately, I would now find myself thinking of asking for a loan or mortgaging my house. What the person suffering from a disease wants is to get well and return to normal life soon. Some hospitals in other countries where luxury health tourism is carried out will receive you with flowers and a glass of champagne, but what the user really wants is to the best medical professionals and the diagnostic and treatment techniques that lead to a better resolution of their pathology. And in this, our health institutions have these people and the latest generation technologies and drugs. For example, from Catalonia Today, clinical trials in oncology and infection by the HIV virus are carried out, which are among the most prominent and of reference in the world. In the same way, our biosanitary professionals receive a good university training that enables them to continue learning the necessary skills to function in the clinical environment. But we have to be vigilant. Very attentive. These workers, driven by their vocation and motivation, give a magnificent service, but if we continue to pay them low salaries and overtime, they will end up burned. That is why I ask public officials to protect them especially. They take care of our health and their well-being is ours.
I would like to briefly address another aspect of the relationship with patients that has to do with biomedical researchers, especially with those from the toughest lab. The complexity of cells and tissues, the hundreds of biochemical and molecular circuits that govern the activity of our cells, and their multiple alterations in disease, sometimes make us forget that, behind all these routes and models, there are some people. Men and women who unfortunately have the diseases we study. Members of a society that has its hopes in us. For all these reasons, as scientists we should often leave the fireworks and face certain realities. Such as the existence of tumors that cannot be cured or the inevitability of the progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. And these cases force us to return to the laboratories to investigate even better and provide solutions. Seeing the face of the patient waiting for a solution should be our best encouragement. Two short personal stories. I remember during my doctoral thesis a girl hiding under a hospital bed to avoid having a leg affected by sarcoma cut off. Another memory of a mother who, a few days after losing her young daughter to a rare disease, tells us to use the girl’s brain to study that pathology is also engraved in my mind. All these people are my heroes. And in both situations I suppressed the tears with a lot of effort. It represents that we have to be objective, but reality hits us when we least expect it.
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I would like to end more brightly and hopefully with a curiosity. Do you know that some biomedical researchers first tried a new treatment, diagnosis, or technique on themselves? This is the case of the demonstration of the infection by the bacterium ‘Helicobacter pylori’ as the cause of the gastric ulcer or the first use of cardiac catheterization. Wonderful crazy. Lovable crazies like professionals in hospitals and primary care centers who protect us, despite the fact that many times their working conditions are not the best. I would like to end these brief lines by thanking all the members of the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital in Badalona, and especially the Cardiology Service. Thank you staff of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, laboratory, administration and orderlies. I want society to recognize your effort.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com