The Independent Union of Physicians said today that the departure of physicians from the National Health Service is a trend that has been increasing in the last five years, with 3.200 physicians being expected to reform in the next three years.
Público advances in today's edition that since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in Portugal, in March, until October, the National Health Service lost 842 doctors, including specialists and interns.
“This is data from the NHS Transparency Portal that reveals the size of this negative balance at a time when the need for doctors soared because of the pandemic. Despite being explained in large part by the high number of retirements recorded in this period, the decrease is not justified only by retirements», can be read in the newspaper.
Contacted by Lusa, the secretary general of the Independent Union of Doctors (SIM), Jorge Roque da Cunha, said that in the next three years, it is planned to reform about 1.500 family doctors and about 1.700 hospital doctors.
On the other hand, there have been, for various reasons, competitions for the recruitment of new specialists in the last three years, in which more than a third of the available positions are open.
Roque da Cunha also pointed out that Portuguese doctors are “highly required, highly respected, given their training and quality, by foreign governments, namely from the Nordic countries, Germany, England, who come to hire them”.
At the same time, he also noted that in recent years "the proliferation of a private initiative that increasingly requires permanent doctors and not service providers" has been seen.
According to Roque da Cunha, the Ministry is aware of these factors and “has perfectly identified data”, but “has been merely a spectator”.
"There hasn't been a proactive attitude in order to mitigate this matter because we are adding here the circumstance that the purchasing power of doctors has decreased by about 30%" and that they have the right to have their children, to accompany them, to have your vacation.
In addition, "doctors have 40 hours in their schedule and have already spent about six million overtime hours until August of this year", a circumstance that equaled the value of 2019.
"All these circumstances in 2019 were perfectly known and many of the services of the National Health Service were already at their limit given the lack of investment", he stressed.
In 2020, "two terrible things happened", the first was the pandemic and the second was "an attitude of the Government of not worrying, devaluing, saying that everything was under control in this matter".
"Therefore, this is not a one-off situation, it is a trend that has already taken place in recent years and is also expected in the next few years," he reiterated.
Although the Ministry of Health says that "it hired thousands of doctors", Roque da Cunha said that "the facts are far more powerful than the reality".
“As is evident in a pandemic situation, where doctors are subject to even more work, even more pressure, needing even longer hours, they become infected and sick and therefore the weaknesses of the system are much more evident”, he maintained.
In order to reverse this situation, he defended it is necessary to improve working conditions, investing in equipment and facilities.
On the other hand, the fact that there are no competitions for advancement has further limited the capacity of the services, he said, exemplifying that in the last 10 years 400 differentiated doctors have been retired and that around XNUMX have been replaced.
According to SIM data, 130 retired doctors were hired by the NHS between March and October this year, for an initial period of four months.
The Health Minister announced in September the opening of public tenders for the hiring of 950 new doctors for the National Health Service (SNS).
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