The Aragonese cardiologist
Fernando Alonso-Lej de las Casas
, creator of the MIR system for preparing doctors in Spain, has died this Wednesday at the Miguel Servet hospital in Zaragoza at the age of 95.
Alonso-Lej studied Medicine at the University of Zaragoza, his hometown, which ended in 1951 with the number one extraordinary award.
To complete his training, he emigrated to the United States, where, between 1951 and 1960, he studied general surgery and thoracic and cardiovascular surgery.
He was the first foreign national to become Chief Resident at a US teaching hospital, the University of Maryland Hospital, Baltimore
.
After 11 years, he returned to Spain and, in 1962, obtained, by competitive examination, the position of
head of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Service at the Hospital General de Asturias
.
He conveyed to the manager of said hospital, Carles Soler Durall, his desire to create and implement a postgraduate training program, the first MIR.
Alonso-Lej, in his capacity as president of the Residents and Teaching Commission of the aforementioned hospital,
drew up a complete protocol, with its corresponding manuals for postgraduate training
.
It began with a first year of rotation through the basic specialties (intern doctors) that would serve to choose, with knowledge of the facts, their future specialty on a vocational basis (resident doctors).
The MIR training was basically based on the formula "Increasing responsibility/Decreasing supervision".
Applicants were selected based on their curriculum vitae (academic merits) and after a personal interview (human and cultural merits).
The program began to function in Spain in 1963, being baptized as Formation of Postgraduate Doctors
.
Alonso-Lej considered that it was a very long name and called it
Internal and Resident Physicians (MIR)
, leaving the first promotion of internal physicians from the General Hospital of Asturias in the 1963-1964 academic year.
Iron door
Already in the 1970s, Professor José María Segovia de Arana introduced MIR training at the Puerta de Hierro Hospital in Madrid
.
To this end, Alonso-Lej provided Dr. Rojo, in charge of teaching at said hospital, with all the MIR program manuals used in its creation and implementation at the General Hospital of Asturias.
During that decade, the MIR training system was extended to Social Security hospitals throughout Spain.
It was generalized in 1972 and was consolidated in 1984 as the only legal route of specialization
.
Alonso-Lej returned to Aragón, where he was head of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the Miguel Servet Hospital in Zaragoza from 1975 to 1998.
His professional career has been recognized by the Collegiate Medical Organization, the Zaragoza College of Physicians.
that named him "collegiate of honour", and in 2019 he was distinguished as Exemplary Zaragozano by the City Council of the Aragonese capital.
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