Frenk J
Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública.
Gac Med Mex. 1990 Mar-Apr;126(2):92-100; discussion 100-1.
The medical profession in Mexico has experienced deep changes during the last decades. One of the most prominent has been the rapid growth in the number of physicians, who have tended to concentrate in the urban areas. In order to examine the sources of such increase, this paper analyzes the composition of the medical profession by age, sex, and social origin. The data come from the National Survey of Medical Employment, carried out in 1986, in which 604 physicians from a representative sample of households were interviewed in 16 of the main Mexican cities. The results show that the medical profession in Mexico is marked by a clear predominance of young people, which in turn is a sign of the recent explosion of graduates from medical schools. At the same time, there is a growing proportion of women. In contrast, the social origin of physicians has not experienced major changes, since most of them continue to come from the middle classes. The interpretation of these findings indicates that the growth in the number of physicians has not been due to a diversification of the social base of the profession, but to a greater demand for medical education among the middle classes and women. The changes experienced by the medical profession have a basic significance for the present and the future of health in México.
在过去几十年里，墨西哥的医疗行业经历了深刻变革。其中最显著的变化之一是医生数量的迅速增长，而且这些医生往往集中在城市地区。为了探究这种增长的来源，本文分析了医疗行业在年龄、性别和社会出身方面的构成情况。数据来自1986年开展的全国医疗就业调查，在墨西哥16个主要城市中，对来自具有代表性家庭样本的604名医生进行了访谈。结果显示，墨西哥医疗行业的显著特点是年轻人占主导，这反过来也表明了医学院校毕业生人数最近出现了激增。与此同时，女性的比例也在不断上升。相比之下，医生的社会出身没有经历重大变化，因为他们中的大多数人仍然来自中产阶级。对这些研究结果的解读表明，医生数量的增长并非源于该行业社会基础的多样化，而是中产阶级和女性对医学教育的需求增加。医疗行业所经历的这些变化对墨西哥目前和未来的健康状况具有根本意义。
