Certification and Recertification of Family Medicine Specialists in Latin America: Situational Diagnosis 2024

Abstract

Certification and recertification of family medicine specialists generate confidence that the doctor has the knowledge and skills necessary to practice the specialty; however, in most Latin American countries this is not done. The first efforts to promote recertification in the Ibero-American region were made 21 years ago, in Margarita Island, Venezuela (2003), during the 2003 Mini-Summit. The objective of this report was to identify the current status of the certification and recertification processes for family medicine specialists in Ibero-America. This is a cross-sectional study carried out by professors and researchers in the specialty of Family Medicine in 19 countries that make up WONCA-Iberoamericana-CIMF. The information was collected with a questionnaire of 34 questions related to the certification and recertification processes of each country. The questionnaire was sent by email to each of the participating researchers. It is noted that nine of the countries studied have made progress in recertification and six of them carry out tangible evaluation processes, with well-defined processes and voluntarily certified physicians.