[Medical care, medical education, and the job market for physicians: internship in Mexico].

This article endeavors to establish a connection between the emergence and development of internship in Mexico and a series of macrosocial changes, including the extension of Government intervention in medical care, the labor market processes that have led to unemployment among physicians, and the responses of the medical education system. The author considers that this comprehensive analysis will be of use in understanding at least in part the complex dynamics of the influence exerted on each other by medical care and medical education, and particularly how changes in conditions on the labor market for physicians have led to the formulation of ideological paradigms of medical practice and to their institutionalization in the programs of study of the medical schools. The study is also important for developed and developing countries with increasing numbers of physicians and which therefore need to understand the possible causes and effects of this trend.