On the 19th of August, an opinion article by José Ponte was published on the subject referred to in the title, the hospital internships of medical students in the Algarve.
Regardless of all the consideration and respect I have for Prof. José Ponte, for his combativeness and tenacity, and his team, in achieving the implementation of a Medicine course at the University of Algarve, “against the winds and tides”, there are some aspects of the article that I would like to comment on.
I am president of the Algarve Sub-Region of the Portuguese Medical Association and director of the CHUA Pulmonology Service – Faro (Algarve Hospital and University Center). In the exercise of these functions, I have always been committed to defending the implementation of the Medicine course and, in the first two years, I taught as a guest professor.
According to the author, the hospital services of hospitals in the Algarve do not have the quality to train medical students, namely accreditation by international agencies with the King's Fund, JCI and ACSA/DGS.
I would like to issue a challenge to the Directorate of the Medicine Course and to Prof. José Ponte to give us a list of hospital services accredited by any of these agencies at a national level. As far as I know, very few services have this accreditation and certainly that the services of hospitals in the Lisbon area and south bank where students are going to intern do not have this accreditation either.
And the Health Centers where the students are interns, do any have accreditation? I'm sure not.
So, only now, after more than 10 years of existence of the Medicine course in the Algarve, are you concerned with the accreditation of services, and have you remembered its importance?
It should also be noted that this type of accreditation does not cover the quality of medical procedures, but essentially aspects of the organization of services, such as signage, patient safety, working conditions, documentation, etc.
Since the University has the money to pay for student travel outside the Algarve, it would be more useful to invest in support for the accreditation of hospital services and this would solve the problem in a more solid and fair way.
The author continues by saying that “recently some services no longer have the minimum quality for student internships”. I am amazed at this statement. The vast majority of CHUA services and Health Centers have training suitability recognized by the Colleges of Specialty and the Medical Association to train new specialists in the various medical areas. So is the training of students more advanced and technically demanding than that of future specialists, already doctors?
I think that placing students outside the Algarve goes against one of the fundamental and basic principles of the creation of the Medicine course at the University of Algarve – training new doctors in the Algarve to try to meet the needs of doctors in the region.
Students, when trained outside the region, will not create strong local ties that make them want to continue in the Algarve. Furthermore, I doubt they will find better training conditions outside the region. Students were welcomed and cared for in hospitals and health centers in the region.
José Ponte ends by saying that “there are no obscure maneuvers”. Will it be? I think there is. All this controversy was triggered by a conflict between the Board of Directors of CHUA and the president of ABC (Algarve Biomedical Center), also a physician and professor in the Medicine course. I will not comment on this matter, I just find it regrettable that students are used as a throwing weapon.
Author Ulisses Brito is a Pulmonologist, director of the Pulmonology Service of Faro of CHUA and president of the Sub-region of Faro of the Medical Association.
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