Rheumatoid arthritis in Latin America: challenges and solutions to improve its diagnosis and treatment training for medical professionals

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a disease with multiple clinical manifestations and chronic complications that requires a multidisciplinary team to treat and monitor patients. This understanding between the different medical and health professionals is essential in obtaining patient well-being. This is the reason behind the assessment of the difficulties and limitations seen in Latin America in the field of rheumatology. The aim is to suggest possible mechanisms and solutions to strengthen the knowledge and understanding of the way the disease behaves and how it can be handled by doctors and medical professionals.

Latin-American challenges and opportunities in rheumatology

“…With regard to health care professionals, including nurses, nutritionists, physiotherapists, and psychologists, which are all partners in the multidisciplinary team to better treat rheumatologic patients, training to provide specialized care rather than increasing their numbers may be the most urgent need [ 3 ].…”

A global perspective on the challenges and opportunities in learning about rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases in undergraduate medical education

“…At the turn of the twenty-first century, undergraduate education in rheumatology was deemed to be inadequate across the globe [26]. In certain medical schools in Latin America, rheumatology accounted for ≤ 1% of the total programme credits [27]. Meaningful progress has since been made by virtue of global initiatives, such as the World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed 'Bone and Joint Decade' (BJD) (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010).…”

“…This work led to the development of recommendations for core RMD curricula and some curricular reform [30][31][32][33][34]. Nevertheless, worldwide deficiencies in RMD knowledge and skills among medical school graduates and PCPs persist [27,35,36]. Surveys of students, graduates, PCPs and even young rheumatologists consistently reveal low confidence in MSK competencies [16,[37][38][39][40].…”