In response to this situation, the Universidad Javeriana published a statement, while dozens of stories from doctors who attest to the mistreatment emerged and began to tell their stories. One of them was the renowned doctor Carlos Jaramillo who, on ‘Vicky en SEMANA’, gave his story.
“There is an excess of work, an excess of schedules, if you haven’t had breakfast, you haven’t eaten, nothing is taken into account. There is the thing about how ‘this is resisted, this builds character’, it destroys the integrity of many people. We all, when we are in the first years of residency, go through this and we all say that we are not going to fall into this and we end up in this,” he said.
Watch the full interview with Dr. Carlos Jaramillo:
“Having to do punishment shifts. Why do they have to punish me if I am paying to learn? I was a successful doctor and, above all, happy, and my fellow resident came to tell me that I had already taken my depression pill. Why did they violate professional confidentiality?” he asked.
“Everyone quits because of abuse. They can point at me and call me names as they wish, the problem is that I am not the only one. In this case of this doctor (who took her own life) they have tried to minimize it, they are trying to normalize it because that is what they have always wanted, to say that ‘you cannot say anything to these little children, generation of crystal’. They should not forget that they are being paid to be taught,” added the doctor. “This is a cultural issue of saying that disrespect is not accepted. It is a student who is paying to be taught in a rigorous but respectful way,” added Jaramillo.
“I asked for a time off and came back after about two months. I went to the psychiatrist, I took the pill. I ended up with a diagnosis of major depression, yes. With a lot of fear, with a lot of uncertainty, I came back. One day there was an emergency and the professor was late in arriving and I did the procedure alone.The professor was a friend of mine and he told me that he didn’t agree. Years later he told me that he had received orders to pressure me when I returned, he gave me shifts on all holidays, he gave me homework. And I said: ‘I don’t want that’. I couldn’t take it anymore, then they offered me two residencies, one in a hospital in Colombia and another in the United States and I said no,” added the doctor.
“I hated my life. Getting into specialization is very, very, very difficult.“, he said, saying that it is complex due to the economic capacity and rigor of the specialization. Jaramillo also explained that there are “young residents,” those who have to endure all kinds of insults for two years, and “big residents,” those who spend four years preparing to become medical specialists in various disciplines.
“It is a profession where this happens a lot, unfortunately,” Jaramillo added, maintaining that the mistreatment became public because of what happened at the Universidad Javeriana, but pointing out that it happens in other faculties.
According to the Colombian doctor, residents often do the work alone, for example attending medical appointments, because the doctors do not show up. The problem, he said, is that the doctors tell them to be “very careful” about leaving their absence in evidence, otherwise there will be consequences.
“After I told what I told, I stopped and cried for half an hour alone. It is a very difficult situation. All of us who were once residents, we were all mistreated,” he said.
The doctor said that he had been there for a year and a half and had two and a half years left to become a surgeon, during which time he performed surgeries of various kinds. “This is a residency, not a resistance,” he said.
The statement from the Javeriana University:
July 21, 2024. Faced with the sad news of the death of our surgical resident, Catalina Gutierrez ZuluagaWe would like to express our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, colleagues and teachers.
With prudence and respect, we have developed some actions to support their loved ones in these difficult times. This is a very difficult event for our educational community, which calls on us to reflect deeply, and with humility, on the culture and the ways of proceeding in the training of our medical specialists.
Although strategies have been developed in this regard, we are aware that we must strengthen our work in caring for our students, teachers and patients. We would like to ask the community to be careful and respectful in the use of words in these moments of vulnerability and sadness for our educational community.
During the week that begins, meetings will be held with professors, spaces for dialogue with residents of different specialties, and this broad process of conversation will be accompanied by the support of the Vice-Rector’s Office for the Environment, to establish the best course of action. The University will review and investigate the existence of situations that are not in line with our way of proceeding and will take the necessary measures to guarantee the well-being of the Javeriana Community.
We know that medical training is challenging and sometimes involves a lot of stress and pressure due to the responsibilities it entails. Therefore, we will listen to and review everything that the community can contribute and suggest to continue implementing all the measures that correspond to the Faculty and the University.
