[Profile and establishment of the physician in the rural Mexican environment]

A survey made of a national sample of physicians revealed certain characteristics which contribute to an understanding of the rural physician's profile in Mexico. Some findings regarding the physician's settling in a rural location are discussed in this article. The most relevant finding is that the rural physician (much more than the urban physician) performs several productive activities unrelated to medicine. This is because in a rural location, the low demographic concentration and scarce social division of labor make it difficult for the individual who is devoted to a single activity to be fully occupied in it. Hence, the physician who settles in this sector has to break from his urban training and be, at first, a man who incorporates himself in the local society both in the economic and social aspects, in order to practice his profession in accordance with actual needs. Moreover, in the rural sector, general medicine predominates over specialized medicine, and the smaller the location, the more private medicine predominates over institutional medicine. This is a result of the rural economic structure which favors precapitalist or capitalist commercial (pre-industrial) relationships. Likewise, it is a product of the current tendency in institutional medicine which converts it into an inflexible costly apparatus, unable to cover the scattered rural population. The results suggest new alternatives for the educational field, especially in relation to the physician-man who seems to be required by the rural sector. With regard to its application, such research opens possibilities for private medicine and represents many institutional alternatives not based on rural sector urbanization but on the ruralization of thought, physician, and medical care. That means accepting the rural reality and knowing it before trying to change it. The author considers that these findings and the conclusions derived from them are applicable not only to Mexico, but to another countries with a similar structure or interests in relation to medical care as well as other areas of human welfare.