Grace Morris
Videographer, Animator, Editor
The Doctor: A Better World
“Yes, I am very tired,”
The sun comes up and there is only one thing that Grego Anguiano wants to do: sleep. His feet hurt and his eyelids feel like two weights over his eyes. It’s eight o’clock in the morning and he drags his body back home like lead. From time to time, he looks around him at the day that begins as it ends for him, it seems like something from a dream. After working a 24-hour shift in the hospital, the world looks a little different. Although the sun shines in the sky, although the air is fresh and clean, he can’t appreciate it.
“Today was very bad because yesterday I worked 24 hours and during the night I only slept four hours overall. An hour and a half here, then an hour or an hour and a half and then in the morning I slept from 2 to 1 hour but after 2 and a half or 3 hours, I have a regular body,”
At age 25, Anguiano is in his first year of residency as a doctor at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital. In spite of the difficulty of his work, he still feels a great passion for it.
“Now I am very happy. If I wasn’t I would change to something else but, yes, I am content and will continue,” Anguiano said.
According to an article in Business Culture, in Spain, the workday of most jobs is eight hours a day, up to a total of 40 hours weekly, like many other countries. In the case of Anguiano, there are weeks in which he works 65 hours, sometimes with 24 hours shifts, like today, followed by 24 hours of rest. The difficulty with this life is not only the large number of hours that doctors accumulate, but also that their schedules vary constantly.
“So, well, I have a weird schedule because every week is different. From 8 to 3 or from 8 to 8, every week is not the same. I can’t, I can’t...for example, say that every Tuesday I go to work because before I was working in the afternoon and night, so usually I am just calculating how much I have to work.” Anguiano yawns and looks at his cell phone.
Click and scroll through the map to see the hospital Grego Anguiano's works at
According to Medical News Today, sleep is one of the essential factors in personal well-being and that without enough sleep, work performance, attention, and health deteriorate. The effects of lack of sleep are very pronounced in resident doctors since they are constantly combining studies and work. Although the constant practice and work many improve their professional competence, the fatigue the accumulates can be detrimental for patients. It is being proven that residents with excessive work hours are more prone to making mistake – up to 36% more– than those who sleep more, as stated in The National Center for Biotechnology Information Journal.
“When a patient has complication it is more complicated to tell [them]. That person has confidence in you and things should not have come out this way, it’s an apology,” Anguiano pauses on the way home and rubs his eye slowly as if wiping away an invisible tear of sadness hidden fro, the rest of the world. Then he sits in a chair near the entrance of a bar looking towards the hospital.
According to the World Health Organization, Spain has the seventh best health system in the world, formed by private health systems and the highly recognized National Health Service, the public system, to which, according to Spain’s economic newspaper Espansión, 15.14% of the citizen’s taxes go to. Anguiano speaks proudly of the public health in his country.
“I believe that health is a right that we all have to have and that we have to pay for all these services, and at the expense of the public system it benefits all that need it.” Anguiano says with pride. “Because after all there are diseases that would not be treated well if it were not this way so we have to feel proud that what we have is very good, we have very good professionals and that also helps the system… We don’t notice differences with people without noting the difference between what a doctor charges here in Spain.”
At the same time, Anguiano acknowledges that even more money would be necessary to, among other things, hire more doctors and alleviate the burden borne by those already employed in the National Health System: 253,796 doctors in 2017, as described in one of Spain’s economic news sites EcoDiario. Specifically, Anguiano wants to be a surgeon and is studying to reach this goal. He takes a small sip of the Coke he had ordered and looks at the hospital.
“Well...I liked the idea very much because it's part medicine and part practical.”
In Spain, according to an article entitled ‘Surgery is Spain’, it takes six years to complete a medical school education. After graduation, you must opt to be part of the National Health System and then you will be placed in a hospital as a Resident medical Intern. This stage of residency lasts at least one year, but in the cases of some specialties, like surgery, it may take up to three or five years.
After drinking his soda, Anguiano gets up to walk to his next meeting. His eyes are two slits, he smiles. He hopes to study a bit of rest before his next meeting.
“For the moment, I am very happy,” he yawns as he walks away.