To start off the day, we walked about a half mile to the Austral University building located in Buenos Aires. During the walk everyone stretched their legs, and attempted to get their last yawns out as we entered the old building. In the building we listened to the guest lecture from Dr.Guillermo Williams, a former member of the Ministry of Health. During the lecture, we learned about the function of the Ministry of Health in Argentina. As well as learning about some of the functions of the Ministry of Health, we learned about how the Argentine government is a federal system. Dr.Guillermo Williams, touched on the impact of the federal system on the Argentine health system. He also expressed some of the challenges and benefits that this system promotes through autonomy.

In general some of the benefits of a federal system are that it creates more citizen participation, disperses power, can create efficiency, and can promote better conflict management. Although, these are some really good reasons for autonomy, when it comes to healthcare, Dr.Guillermo Williams believes it’s a dangerous system. He said that within Argentina, all the healthcare Universities are autonomous, and this creates complications when it comes to training and practice of medical personal. He mentioned how legally after everyone fulfills their required training/education, everyone is on a similar page. However, when you look closely, no one is exactly on the same page because all the different healthcare universities have different standards.

Dr.Guillermo Williams believes there such be a national regulatory system when it comes to healthcare training and educating. He said that many times a nurse from one university may not have the same required training from their university as someone else, so when they both go to practice, one nurse may actually be a liability. Then, after the discovery that someones training and education may not be adequate, they will have to go back to school to receive more training and education from a different university. He says this happens because all the universities are autonomous on what they require their students to fulfill and each schools final test may be different. To combat this issue, Dr.Guillermo Williams suggest that there should be a national test across the country. He also said that for issues like this, this is exactly why the Ministry of Health is there and should have more of a national regulatory presence than it currently does.