Noelia García, provisional number 1 of MIR 2024: "Dermatology and Endocrinology interest me and in the long term they can offer me a good quality of life"

Nuria Monsó Madrid

Madrid

Updated Thursday, February 8, 2024-09:23

• Health Spain faces a summer with a 'hole' of more than 5,700 MIR specialist doctors

• MIR 2024 Record number of MIR family doctor positions despite lack of interest in the specialty

Noelia García is the provisional number 1 of the MIR 2024 exam

. This Medicine graduate from the

Autonomous University of Madrid has achieved a total of

190 hits and 10 misses

in her first attempt at the MIR exam

. In a first interview with this newspaper, García revealed his preferences regarding the specialty: "

I have always wanted to do Dermatology or Endocrinology and Nutrition and I am still hesitating

. I have to talk to more residents and see what attracts me the most. I don't know the hospital either, but I know that I want to stay in Madrid."

García has prepared with the

MIR Asturias

academy , which will have managed to train the number 1 candidate for the third consecutive year if these results are confirmed in the final lists. This doctor began preparing in the

sixth year of her degree

starting in December 2023, opting for the academy's 17-month intensive course.

She highlights that in the simulations she already obtained more than 180 net

, "but at the academy they had told us not to believe it."

THE IMPORTANCE OF REST

What have you done differently from the rest? "We all study and dedicate many hours and a lot of effort to studying, but I think that just as important as studying is respecting rest, both at night and going out to get some fresh air, do some sports, refresh the mind and not just be studying" , reflects the candidate. "If you are tired you are not going to perform the same and it is something that I have always had in mind.

Just as high-performance athletes spend many hours training a day but the rest of the time what they do is rest and do everything possible to optimize rest and the next day give your best, when you prepare for an opposition like the MIR exam, it's the same

. You have to work hard and study hard, but you have to rest so that you can repeat it the next day."

She explains that she has distant relatives in the healthcare world, both doctors and nurses, but that in her immediate family she is the first to get the bug. "

When I was in high school and they asked me what I wanted to be, I wasn't sure.

In fact, in the list I made for Evau, my first options were

Medicine, Biochemistry or Economics

. But in the end, I thought a little about what job I saw myself doing. For most of my life, a doctor was one in which I saw myself being happy. There was no further reasoning, I could have chosen something else, it was not something vocational in the sense that I could only be a doctor.

He acknowledges that the first years were quite hard with the change from high school to university and with basic subjects rather than clinical content: "You still saw yourself very far from the performance of Medicine, studying something that you were not very interested in and that you did not have many facilities". Furthermore, during the third year, with the pandemic, he believes that the training suffered a lot, especially in the practices, "which had to be recovered at the beginning of the fourth year and in fits and starts." However, he highlights that "all these obstacles are being overcome and I am glad that I persevered even though several times, especially in first and second year, I considered changing careers, because I didn't see that so much suffering was worth it."

She confesses that, apart from the practices and mandatory seminars, she barely went to class, so her study has been based on notes and reference manuals: "It was more profitable for me to study it alone at home than to go to college.

To "Being in class was a very passive way of studying, it was not profitable

. I realized that I arrived home and it was as if I had not been there, I did not remember anything, so I had to change my method."

He chose the MIR Asturias academy because the manuals, having summaries, illustrations and test questions, seemed to be the most complete. In addition, he highlights that it is the academy with the most simulations, "and

they are longer but you have less time to do them than in the MIR exam. This

overtraining

makes you feel looser on the day of the MIR

. Immediately after the Saturday simulation you have a class of correction of 4 hours, which makes the reasoning you have used fresh".

IMPRESSIONS FROM THE MIR 2024 EXAM

Regarding the exam on January 20, García points out that it was "similar to others we had done at the academy, in the sense that

the questions were about familiar concepts that we had already worked on and that have appeared two or more times

in previous calls [the so-called

repeMIR

in the jargon of the academy]". Yes, it was

longer than previous exams

, although he acknowledges that he was able to finish on time because at MIR Asturias they train with tests of 225 questions and 4 hours long, compared to the 210 questions and 4 and a half hours of the official exam.

Regarding his future, he points out that he is still hesitating between two specialties that he liked since college, and in which he had the opportunity to rotate for an additional month during sixth year. Regarding

Dermatology,

he highlights that "although it is a medical-surgical surgery,

the surgeries are not very complex and I like that it has something more manual

, like biopsies, even though it scares me because I am a little clumsy, but I have been told that those things they train and I don't have to worry about that.

Regarding

Endocrinology, he explains that the part of

Clinical Nutrition

catches his attention

. Furthermore, he highlights both are specialties that "personally interest me and in the long term they can offer me a good quality of life."