MR Interviews...
Rómulo Rodríguez Ramos, MD, MS
Academic Chair, Master’s Degree Program in Natural and Traditional Medicine

Dr. Rodríguez is the Rector of the Carlos J. Finlay Institute of Medical Sciences Camagüey Province.  He is a psychiatrist by training, and currently chairs the Academic Committee of Cuba’s Master’s Degree Program in Natural and Traditional Medicine .  He is also Co-Director of the Master’s Degree in Natural Medicine, Acupuncture and Homeopathy of the University of Valenc ia, Spain. Dr. Rodríguez has published numerous articles on the subject of NTM and has participated in over 20 international conferences and congresses on the subject.

We interviewed him to find out more about the teaching of natural and traditional medicine in Cuba.

MR: Tell us about Cuba’s Master’s Degree Program in Natural and Traditional Medicine.

RR: The Master’s Degree in NTM is a two-year course, full time for the first year. It is composed of six modules on the subjects of bioenergetics and natural medicine, the design of projects and research methodology, acupuncture, herbal therapies, physical medicine and rehabilitation, psychological techniques and several elective courses. At the end of the two-year term, the students present a thesis, which they must defend for their degree.

MR: Can you give us an idea of how the Medical School in Camagüey incorporates NTM into its courses?

RR: The school’s reference center in NTM integrates training, research and clinical applications. The Center headquarters the school’s Department of NTM, and also includes a clinic, a library specializing in the subject, a research lab and a garden of medicinal plants. Training is carried out at the undergraduate level (for medical students), and also at the post-graduate level, in which we offer courses, internships,  the Master’s Degree program, and also NTM as a specialty for residents.

Research projects are chosen with the aim of scientifically verifying and validating the results of NTM techniques, and their results are often published and/or presented in national and international scientific events.

Clinically speaking, you can find NTM teaching clinics in every municipality of our province, linked to the primary health care system.  They can also be found in emergency care, polyclinics and hospitals.

MR: How is NTM taught to medical students?  What is the curriculum?

RR: Natural and Traditional Medicine is part of the medical school curriculum:  this is true actually throughout Cuba.  But in Camagüey, we have the special responsibility of work leading to the Master’s Degree Program, and so, the existence of a Department of Natural and Traditional Medicine, the clinic, and the research laboratories for scientifically validating NTM procedures contribute to a scientific environment in which many professors of the different medical school courses are already trained in NTM, and have introduced this element into their classes. The basic elements of NTM that students learn in medical school is later reinforced with postgraduate studies.

Caridad Castañeda Gueimonde, MD, RN
Recipient, MEDICC Review Research Award in Women’s Health, 2002

Dr. Castañeda has an unusual professional history:  her debut came as a nurse specializing in intensive care, and she went on to study the same field of medicine, earning her MD.  She is currently Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine at the Matanzas Provincial Medical School.  She received the MEDICC Award for her research on Gender and Ischemic Heart Disease.

MR: Dr. Castañeda, what motivated you and your team to choose this subject for your research?  Why women’s health?

CC: We were prompted by the fact that 37% of the workforce in Cuba is women, and 38% out of that 37%, are middle-aged women. Therefore, we began looking at the problems they face, because of their dual role as working women and as homemakers, the pressures they might come under.  These might be women with no apparent physical symptoms, but who require lasting solutions to potential health problems, many of which can result from stress. We tried to differentiate among the causal factors of ischemic heart disease:  particular physical pathologies as well as social and domestic problems.

In addition, in terms of treatment, drug registry policies traditionally have been in the hands of men, and we feel that there is a need to reflect more on such policies, to apply a gender perspective.

More specifically our work on gender and ischemic heart disease is motivated by the fact that this is an important cause of physical disability, and the diagnosis behaves differently in men and women. There are physiological changes, such as increase in vascular tone, that allow for many false positive tests in women, and cases of ischemic cardiopathy have been detected that are not real. We want to offer non-invasive solutions for the diagnosis of this condition in women. Of course, research is never the work of only one person, so I would like to mention and acknowledge the work of my fellow researchers, Dr. Reynaldo Amigo González, Cardiologist, and Dr. Ada Prior García, Epidemiologist.

MR: You are a physician who began as a nurse.  How did you make your career choices?

CC: I graduated as a nurse in 1972, and in 1975 became a specialist in intensive care, working in ICUs, which at the time were called “coronary care” units.  Later, I became chief of nursing in Intensive Care. I finally decided to study medicine, and graduated in 1982.  I went on to do my residency in internal medicine, and then served in Guinea Bissau as a specialist in Intensive Care from 1986 to 1988. On my return to Cuba, I worked as a clinician, and in 1989 became a professor of Internal Medicine at the Matanzas Provincial Medical School.

I think I made these life decisions, choosing the health professions, because I always felt inclined to help others, as a doctor or a professor, to help others in their moral or physical pain. I found the solution in my profession, in which I can do both. I went on from nursing to medicine when I found I couldn’t go any further in my studies as a nurse--there were no more higher education courses in nursing in Matanzas at the time.  So, for a person like me who didn’t want to separate herself from her patients in order to continue studying, medicine was the perfect choice.

A medical student does not receive the kind of practical training that nurses receive from the beginning of their studies. And there is a degree of patient-nurse relations that are very special, and which I think I’ve been able to carry with me as a physician, allowing me to more fully relate to my patients.

MR: What are you working on right now?

CC: Besides practicing as an internist and teaching, I am doing intensive research on various issues concerning women’s health. Colleagues and I have developed several research projects that have produced papers: “Cardiovascular Manifestations in Female Climactery”, “Ischemic Cardiopathy: Women vs. Men”, “Female Inpatients”, “Climactery and Obesity” (this one received an award in 2002 at the Ibero-American Medical Congress), and “Sexual Health and Climactery”, which was selected for presentation at the World Congress on Sexology, 2003. And I am continuing research into gender and ischemic heart disease.