Practicing medicine is an individual activity, since ethics and professional responsibility are personal. There is no way in which we can share responsibility regarding medical acts, nor can we ascribe ethical responsibility to institutions.
On many occasions, situations with consequences that affect physicians but in which their participation is small, can be seen. The most frequent of these is inadequacy of healthcare equipment, which goes from choosing implant materials to the state of hospitals.
Our individuality is minimized through our professional associations, which in reality are of relatively recent origin.
The Brazilian Medical Association (Associação Médica Brasileira, AMB) originated from the São Paulo Medical Association (Associação Paulista de Medicina, APM) in 1951, founded by Professor Jairo Ramos, and its first president was the great surgeon Professor Alipio Correa Netto. It was initially a society of scientific nature, but today its role is to defend the medical profession in political and institutional arenas.
The Journal of the Brazilian Medical Association (Jornal da Associação Médica Brasileira, JAMB) was initially a scientific journal but today it is dedicated to subjects of professional and political nature. It is widely read, and is probably the medical publication that is most read in Brazil.
Over these 64 years, medicine has evolved and many specialties have emerged and have become autonomous. In this manner, medicine in the fullness of its extent has become fragmented into many fields, and the AMB is left with the task of overall defense of medicine, with the various specialties as its subsidiaries. We at the Brazilian Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology (Sociedade Brasileira de Ortopedia e Traumatologia, SBOT) are the subsidiary of the AMB in the field of orthopedics and we have an excellent relationship with the AMB. The São Paulo regional division of the SBOT has had its main office on the premises of the APM for many years.
The AMB is a body that protects and brings together the medical profession and acts in all fields of medical activity whenever requested. Recently, Brazilian specialist medical journals were having some assessment and valuation difficulties with the government funding agency CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior; Coordination Office for Improvement of University-level Personnel), and it was the AMB that has brought us together to seek solutions for these problems.
The congresses of the AMB used to be excellent and there was even a department of congresses within the AMB, headed by Silvia Mangabeira Albernaz and by Celina Fleury, who defined practically everything that exists today with regard to organizing congresses in Brazil.
Today, AMB congresses no longer take place, and there is no doubt that this has weakened the institution and has distanced us from our professional activity. We are physicians before we are orthopedists, but we are unaware of what is going on in other specialties, regardless of how much these might influence our patients and consequently our professional activity. We even have difficulty in recommending a colleague in another field for our clients.
The SBOT was founded in 1935, well before the AMB, and it is turning 80 this year. It held its first congress in 1936, in São Paulo.
In this eightieth year, we are holding our 47th Brazilian Congress of Orthopedics and Traumatology (Congresso Brasileiro de Ortopedia e Traumatologia, CBOT), also in São Paulo.
Today, orthopedics is a specialty with many subdivisions, and these sub-specialties have a very solid structure. In a few years from now, we are likely to have an SBOT that is dedicated to selecting new members and defending and preserving ethics and responsibilities in the specific field of orthopedics.
When all the specialties reach majority and autonomy, the CBOT will probably have to change its focus.
The Day of the Specialty, an idea imported from the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), needs to be given due value, so that we can attract specialists and complement generalists' training. We cannot neglect matters of general interest, since these maintain the unity of the specialties and thus make the CBOT viable.
The survival of the CBOT will depend on scientific and commercial factors. If there is scientific interest, there will be economic interest.
We will be remaining alert, so that what happened to the AMB congress does not happen to the CBOT, since this is the time when the SBOT comes together and shows its strength.
As individualists not by choice but through consequence, we need our strong institutions.
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1
2255-4971/(c) 2015 Sociedade Brasileira de Ortopedia e Traumatologia.
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2
Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda.All rights reserved.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Oct 2015
