La responsabilidad social de las facultades de Medicina. Una exigencia inaplazable para adaptarse a las necesidades de la población

Abstract

Social responsibility (SR) is a philosophy which starts to permeate the medical schools and drives the need to revise their mission in society and how to better contribute to its development for equity, participation, collaboration and social welfare values. We speak of the fact that medical schools must become aware of their obligations to satisfy the needs of society, as expressed by the global consensus in SR. In some countries, especially in the Anglo-Saxon ones, USA, Australia and Canada SR where has already being implemented. In Europe its implementation is still limited, except for some very specific cases in France and Belgium due to the Francophone Network. For some authors we are facing a change in the medical education paradigm which may have similar impact as the Flexner report in 1910, when a radical change took place, both in the training of the doctor and in the professional practice, which led to specialization and detriment of general medicine.The aim of this article is to clarify the concept, background and implications of SR in health science schools, as well as to present the main models developed up to now, all of them oriented to Primary and Community Care, a weakness that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted.