“It has been more than proven that Portugal has enough doctors, but they are not in the National Health Service (SNS). Instead of diverting attention with somewhat populist measures that are unrealistic for this moment, we should focus on the SNS and its ability to attract human resources now,” said Carlos Cortes.
In a phone interview, commenting on Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s announcements for the health sector, the president of the Medical Association (OM) asked not to push problems away.
“The country, at this moment, does not have a problem with medical students or graduates. The country has a problem with the SNS. I wouldn’t want us to fall into this fallacy again of making a direct connection between the number of medical students and the number of specialist doctors in the SNS,” said Carlos Cortes.
On Wednesday, in a speech at the Pontal Festival in Quarteira, Faro district, which marked the PSD’s political ‘return’, Luís Montenegro announced the creation of more vacancies for the Medicine course to compensate for the retirements of SNS doctors.
Today, Carlos Cortes said that “it is commendable that the Prime Minister has placed health as one of the priority themes of his speech” because “it means he is committed to health and recognizes the difficulties that the SNS is going through,” but he was “surprised by the announced measures.”
“Portugal has enough doctors. Portugal is, in the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] analysis, one of the countries with the most doctors per 1,000 inhabitants (…). It always seems very nice to tell the population that the number will be increased […] but what the country needs most is not more vacancies, it’s measures to attract doctors,” he reaffirmed, summarizing what he considers most urgent.
“Better working conditions for doctors, valuing doctors’ careers, reviewing remuneration issues with unions, and improving training and research to attract more doctors,” he listed.
Carlos Cortes recalled that in the last 25 years, the number of medical schools increased from five to 12, and medical students from about 500 to 1,700, and said that Portugal has close to 2,000 new medical graduates every year, including those coming from abroad.
According to the president, this year the Directorate-General for Higher Education conducted a study on the country’s medical needs and concluded that Portugal needed to have 15 to 30 new vacancies in Medical Schools.
“The University of Aveiro will start [a new course] with 40 vacancies and then [in subsequent years] with double or triple those vacancies,” added the president.
Carlos Cortes warned that last year more than 400 specialty vacancies were left unfilled, a number that, he said, “has grown year after year,” which is why “measures are needed now, not 15 years from now.”
“This increase in vacancies and the creation of new faculties will only have specialist doctors capable of joining the SNS 15 years from now. The Prime Minister’s promise does not solve today’s SNS problems, it only pushes the problem away,” he reinforced.
Another measure suggested by Carlos Cortes, who criticized the “regrettable delays of the ULS [Local Health Units] in competitive procedures,” is the publication of hospital vacancies for specialties in February or March, before doctors finish their specialization.
“Doctors finished their specialty in April, and in August many of them had not even been contacted by the SNS (…). Private hospitals and those abroad did not wait until August to entice doctors to work in their staff,” he concluded.
