DI CROCE, Gabriela
Argentina - Family Doctor
What work you do now?
I currently work for a medical care institution run by the Worker's Union in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires Province in Argentina. My tasks involve the medical management of two centres of this institution, which is a task that I have been developing for five months since I returned to my home province.
It has been a great challenge, a new activity for me but very gratifying and enriching. It's not an easy assignment, since around 50 or 60 people among doctors and other staff depend on my work.
I am also trying to set up my private practice, which is one of my biggest illusions. However, it advances slowly due to the multiple contingencies that we have to undergo. Furthermore, I dedicate my spare time to another essential and meaningful job such as the Coordination of Regional Waynakay Movement Latin America and participation in the local Association of Family Medicine.
Tell us more about your experience as a family doctor?
My relationship with family medicine is the reverse of most colleagues. I graduated from the Faculty of Medicine without understanding what being a family doctor really meant.
However, I was lucky enough to be able to travel to the north of Argentina to perform a mandatory internship after getting my MD degree.
To develop this activity, I had chosen the rural area. I learned there the true meaning of being a family doctor. The essential skills and knowledge you need, but above all, the immense range of possibilities to connect with your team and community in a way I could have never imagined; travelling long distances to visit patients, among other things.
It was deep love, a process of intense deconstruction, with an unexpected result but that I would choose again. Since then, I have travelled many areas of Argentina, working, learning and building this endless universe.
What other relevant activities have you been involved in?
During my student years, I was a teacher of internal medicine for four years. After finishing my studies, I returned to the north of Argentina, where I spent 18 months in charge of a rural primary care centre, with deep participation in community activities.
Then, after a brief period in Buenos Aires, I travelled to Mendoza (Argentina), where I was trained as a family doctor. During this period, I got to know the “Argentine Federation of Family Doctors”, Wonca Iberoamericana-Cimf, WONCA and the YDM.
Little by little, I began to get involved in different tasks going from the local coordination of Waynakay Argentina to the Regional Coordination of Waynakay Latin America, and today, I integrate the Executive Committee of CIMF.
I have also been an active member of the local Societies of Family Medicine, involved in their Directive Committees, and in multiple CIMF-Wonca Special Interest Groups (SIGs), especially Quaternary Prevention.
What are your main interests at work and in private?
It may sound somehow simple, but the main interest of my work is to make medicine fundamentally "harmless" every day.
I want to help to contribute to people's health with my small contributions, from a place of respect, empathy and always ruled by equity. I cannot think of myself functioning otherwise within this profession.
In my personal life, I like to enjoy my family; spend time with my partner and my children. Being a mother, a doctor, a young woman in a region like Latin America is not easy at all. On the contrary, It could be very challenging.
I have some very diverse personal interests, but if I had to choose one, it would be touring America, learning from the ancestral knowledge of our original cultures and, why not, a bit of its worldview and its way of understanding the world.