Huguet urged the UdL to submit an application for the next campus of excellence call, but said he attached little importance to whether or not it would be selected as Catalan universities had more than proven their degree of excellence. He went on to defend the creation of an agri-food network in Catalonia that would link up several universities because “as a small nation we must share leadership”. The minister also encouraged researchers from the fields of the health and agri-food sciences to conduct their research together in the pursuit of a common strategic line.

When questioned about the high number of foreign students at the UdL’s Faculty of Medicine, Huguet suggested that applicants to courses in medicine should be examined to test their Spanish and Catalan language skills. The rector, Joan Viñas, however, was unable to comment on whether this solution could be put in place by the next academic year.

This new facility makes the Faculty of Medicine of Lleida one of the best equipped medical faculties in the country

The new facility that opened today, located on the second floor of the Arnau de Vilanova Teaching Hospital, has been designed as a circuit of workstations in which a doctor’s surgery, examination room, operating theatre and emergency booth have been set up. The building work and the purchase of basic equipment (audiovisual material, furniture, dissection tables, etc.) cost over 268,000 euros. Among the facility’s most striking features are the one-way security glass partitions (mirror effect) and the two state-of-the-art simulators, one of which is for cardiopulmonary auscultation and the other for measuring patients’ vital signs, which were acquired two years ago with the support of the Board of Governors.

The simulators, which were first used last year to assess medical students, are interactive. “You can intubate, defibrillate, ventilate and program various scenarios”, explained the lecturer in medicine, Javier Trujillano. According to the decisions taken by the person using the simulator, the “patient” will stabilise or die. This new facility makes the Faculty of Medicine of Lleida one of the best equipped of its kind in the country.