Bones, injuries and dedication: the work of trauma specialists at Fraternidad-Muprespa (I)

Today we publish the first part of this report prepared based on the experiences, work experience and professional development of four traumatologists from the Southern Territorial Directorate of The second part of this report will be available next Thursday, June 26.

In Spain the number of registered doctors exceeds 300,000, according to the National Institute of Statistics. Of them, in 2023 more than 4,200 practiced traumatology, which is the specialty on which most of the attention falls on workers who suffer a work accident.

This reality turns the Mutual Collaborators with Social Security into reference centers in orthopedic surgery and traumatology and that is why we direct our gaze to this profession and especially to the professionals who practice it, to better understand their reality.

Although practically everyone has gone to the traumatologist at some point, there are aspects of this profession that remain unknown. Through the testimonies of four men, Adolfo, Pablo, Víctor and Rodrigo, we will learn more about what they do, how they work and how traumatological pathology is cured at Fraternidad-Muprespa.

The doctors Adolfo Mares, Pablo García Parra, Víctor Morales and Rodrigo Corena They belong to the Southern Territorial Directorate of the Mutua. Between the four of them they have accumulated dozens of years as doctors, also dozens of years of seniority at the Mutua, hundreds of patients under their belts and thousands of operating room hours under their belts, a sum of professional experience that, put together, becomes a remarkable collective experience.  They are a team, they are collaboration and they are a lot of decisions and solutions for their patients.  

Seville and Malaga are the physical centers in which they work. In Seville, doctors Adolfo Mares and Pablo García Parra, who treat patients from their province and also from Cádiz, Huelva and part of Córdoba. They divide their work hours between operating rooms and consultations, just as doctors Morales and Corena do in Malaga. 

The digital space, the videoconferences, are also their office, their other consultation room, where they hold their clinical sessions. On Fridays the small ones are celebrated, the ones that bring the four of them together.

“We provide our vision of the patient's evolution, explain how we are going to proceed with the surgeries and listen to suggestions.” explains Pablo García Parra, who details what some of these contributions consist of. “Today, for example, we have been looking at a wrist injury that we have to operate on Monday and Víctor (Dr. Morales) has suggested that we carry out a procedure to reduce the patient's sensation of pain.”.

The four share the vision of traumatology as a specialty in which creativity has a great place. “When you do a technique with a patient", explains Dr. Morales, "You know what the beginning should be, what the end should be of what you are doing, but you don't know what the journey of that technique is like, because each patient is different and requires different things. In the end we do artisanal work, and that is what is beautiful and difficult. You have to have the ability to improvise because things don't always go the way you thought.”.

And in addition to the sessions for the four of them, they take part in those organized by the Fraternidad-Muprespa Havana Hospital, with around thirty trauma professionals who address case studies. A doctor presents a topic or a case and presents it to the rest of his colleagues, who raise questions about it.

A practice that, for Dr. García Parra, makes a team.

I feel part of the Mutua trauma family because we work closely with our Hospital colleagues. We are a 'tentacle' of the Madrid service, but displaced. We try to use the same techniques, same indications and same protocols.

“Teamwork” is a concept that none of them stop repeating in the conversation. From the youngest and with the least seniority at Mutua, Dr. Corena, to the most experienced. Working as a team is not a choice. It is simply what it has to be.