Providing doctors, particularly younger ones, with the opportunity to «lead differentiating projects and implement them» may be the key to convincing more clinicians to join the staff of the University Hospital Center of the Algarve (CHUA), believes Ana Castro, the new president of the Board of Directors of Hospitals in the Algarve.
However, this alone will not be enough to keep these professionals here. Another issue, which has already led the new CHUA administration to appeal to guardianship, is the difficulty in finding a house and the price of housing in the Algarve region.
In an interview with Sul Informação, the first in depth after taking office as chairman of the CHUA Board, in July, Ana Castro revealed her view on the chronic shortage of doctors at CHUA and what solutions can be implemented.
After all, he assured, his intention is to "do something" to improve the Algarve's hospitals, bearing in mind that he believes that «people who live in the Algarve also deserve to have good health».
As for the attraction of more doctors, Ana Castro does not doubt that «there are several favorable things here that we can do, which have to do, above all, with attracting younger doctors, for the different projects they can do here».
“This hospital, having a slightly shorter staff, has an advantage over others. Those who come here can make projects more easily, lead initiatives more easily. We are betting on younger people, too, so that they will want to stay to lead differentiating projects and implement them. We are allowing them to do that,” he said.
«I think that it is the projects that make people stay in the National Health Service. It is not the money, the money is the same for everyone», he believes.
On the other hand, there is the issue of housing, an ordeal that Ana Castro felt in her own skin, since she, too, came from outside the region.
“Another difficulty – which we have already conveyed to the tutelage, also asking for the maintenance of vacancies for needy areas – has to do with the difficulty that new people who want to come here have in finding a house. This is a chronic difficulty here in the Algarve that I experienced in the first person, I know very well what happens to them», he told the Sul Informação head of public hospitals in the Algarve.
In other words, people “earn the same and pay much more from home. And it has a greater difficulty in finding a house».
«The Algarve is very beautiful, coming here on vacation is spectacular. People come a week, but they don't pay for a house every month. If they pay for a house every month they will realize how difficult it is. There is something essential, which has to do with being able to get a house at least annually, because usually you only get houses there from October until May. And people, during the break, cannot walk with things on their backs», he considered.
It is also "important" to keep the Algarve in the list of deprived areas and where specialist doctors who settle there are offered benefits such as more vacation days and a salary incentive, for a period of three years.
“I think we have to rethink this area of housing a little, because it is difficult to attract professionals, in any sector, if we don't have conditions for people to live afterwards. It always makes everything more complex. The cost of living here is much more expensive. Food, houses, everything is much more expensive and people receive the same», he illustrated.
Even so, there are other issues that have been pointed out by different health officials, as justification for the Algarve's chronic difficulties in attracting more doctors: the internal turmoil in the region's hospitals, the great competition that is carried out by private health units and the lack of a modern, well-dimensioned Central Hospital, among others.
When it comes to internal turmoil, Ana Castro devalues the issue.
“I think that what happens here is no different from other hospitals in the country. An institution is the same thing as a house: the more people you put in it, the more likely people are to get upset. Because, the CHUA has 4700 employees, so it must be normal for there to be tensions, as there are in any other large hospitals and hospitals», he said.
With regard to the Central Hospital, although she admits that the modernization of equipment can be a factor of attraction, the chairman of the Board of CHUA believes that people «would come anyway if we modernized those who are here at the moment».
“A central hospital will solve a structural problem, that is, the walls. It will be prettier, more appealing. But it still has the same problem, it still lacks people», he believes.
«I think it is necessary, first, to motivate people, to make them realize that there is serious investment in the Algarve. And, at this moment, serious investment doesn't just go through walls, it also goes through the equipment, it goes through valuing who we have here. Until we do that, it's no use having some spectacular walls. Why, and then what? Who am I going to put there to work?”, he asked.
In this field, «an investment plan was made to try to start renovating and having other types of equipment that we do not have. There is the case of angiography, for example, which is equipment that we want to have in order to support vascular surgery».
As for the practice of medicine in private institutions “it is more attractive, in the sense of what it pays to professionals”.
That is why it is important to have "attractive projects", since there are many clinicians who prefer the NHS because "they perform operations that they do not do abroad, because everything that is complicated and complex is in the NHS and when doctors graduated it was from the perspective of complex situations'.
“There are very few doctors who think it's funny to be in the office doing consultations and taking the little sign. Obviously, I realize that, from a remuneration point of view, it turns out to be more attractive to go to the private sector, because there they can pay what I don't pay, isn't it? Because what I pay is the same everywhere. Now, I believe that with differentiating projects, many doctors can be brought».
As for the clinicians who are already at the house, Ana Castro wants to “increase the hourly value of my hospital doctors”.
"That was the proposal I presented to the Minister, so that we could discuss, although at the moment, with the current situation, it is not the right time for her to even think about listening to us: but we are trying to increase the hourly value of our doctors of the house, so that service providers are not needed to do the additional work», concluded the chairperson of the Board of Directors of CHUA.
In the same interview, Ana Castro revealed the measures that were taken by hospitals in the Algarve to face the second wave of Covid-19, as Sul Informação already managed.
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