Collado Ardón R
Educ Med Salud. 1983;17(3):243-62.
A survey made of a national sample of physicians revealed certain characteristics which contribute to an understanding of the rural physician's profile in Mexico. Some findings regarding the physician's settling in a rural location are discussed in this article. The most relevant finding is that the rural physician (much more than the urban physician) performs several productive activities unrelated to medicine. This is because in a rural location, the low demographic concentration and scarce social division of labor make it difficult for the individual who is devoted to a single activity to be fully occupied in it. Hence, the physician who settles in this sector has to break from his urban training and be, at first, a man who incorporates himself in the local society both in the economic and social aspects, in order to practice his profession in accordance with actual needs. Moreover, in the rural sector, general medicine predominates over specialized medicine, and the smaller the location, the more private medicine predominates over institutional medicine. This is a result of the rural economic structure which favors precapitalist or capitalist commercial (pre-industrial) relationships. Likewise, it is a product of the current tendency in institutional medicine which converts it into an inflexible costly apparatus, unable to cover the scattered rural population. The results suggest new alternatives for the educational field, especially in relation to the physician-man who seems to be required by the rural sector. With regard to its application, such research opens possibilities for private medicine and represents many institutional alternatives not based on rural sector urbanization but on the ruralization of thought, physician, and medical care. That means accepting the rural reality and knowing it before trying to change it. The author considers that these findings and the conclusions derived from them are applicable not only to Mexico, but to another countries with a similar structure or interests in relation to medical care as well as other areas of human welfare.
一项对全国医生样本进行的调查揭示了某些有助于了解墨西哥乡村医生概况的特征。本文讨论了一些关于医生在农村地区定居的调查结果。最相关的发现是，乡村医生（比城市医生更是如此）从事多项与医学无关的生产性活动。这是因为在农村地区，人口密度低且社会分工稀少，致力于单一活动的个人很难在其中充分就业。因此，在该地区定居的医生必须打破其城市培训模式，首先成为一个在经济和社会方面融入当地社会的人，以便根据实际需求开展其职业活动。此外，在农村地区，全科医学比专科医学更占主导地位，而且地区越小，私人医疗比机构医疗更占主导地位。这是农村经济结构的结果，这种结构有利于前资本主义或资本主义商业（前工业化）关系。同样，这也是机构医疗当前趋势的产物，这种趋势使其变成了一个僵化且成本高昂的机构，无法覆盖分散的农村人口。这些结果为教育领域提出了新的选择，特别是与农村地区似乎需要的医生型人才相关的选择。关于其应用，此类研究为私人医疗开辟了可能性，并代表了许多不基于农村地区城市化而是基于思想、医生和医疗服务农村化的机构选择。这意味着接受农村现实并在试图改变它之前了解它。作者认为，这些发现以及从中得出的结论不仅适用于墨西哥，也适用于其他在医疗保健以及人类福利其他领域具有类似结构或利益的国家。
