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The president of the Medical Association (OM), Carlos Cortes, considered this Thursday that the announcement of more places for medical courses was “populist and unrealistic” given the urgent problems of the National Health Service (SNS).
“It has been proven that Portugal has enough doctors, but they are not on social networks. Instead of diverting attention with some populist measures, but currently impractical, we should now focus on social networks and their ability to attract human resources.” “, said Carlos Cortes.
In a telephone statement to Lusa, commenting on the statements of Prime Minister Louis Montenegro in the field of health, the president of the Games asked not to push these issues.
“Currently, the country does not have a problem with medical students or graduates. The country has a problem with the National Health Service (NHS). I do not want us to fall into this fallacy again of directly linking numbers with the number of medical students and the number of specialists in the SNS”, says Carlos Cortes.
The creation of more vacancies for medical courses to compensate for the retirement of NHS doctors was announced on Wednesday by Luís Montenegro during an intervention at the Festa do Pontal in Quarteira, in the Faro district, marking the political “return” of the PSD.
This Thursday, Carlos Cortes said that “it is welcome that the Prime Minister has included health as one of the priority themes of his speech” because “it means that he is committed to health and recognizes the difficulties faced by the SNS”, but was “surprised by the measures announced”.
“Portugal has enough doctors. According to an analysis by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), Portugal is one of the countries with the highest number of doctors per 1,000 inhabitants (…). It is always nice for the people to say that this will increase the number (…), but what the country needs most is not more vacancies, but measures to attract doctors”, he reiterated, summarizing the measures he considers the most urgent.
He listed “improving working conditions for doctors, enhancing doctors’ careers, reviewing pay issues with unions and improving training and research to attract more doctors”.
Carlos Cortes recalled that in the past 25 years, medical schools have increased from five to 12 and the number of medical students has increased from around 500 to 1,700, adding that Portugal has nearly 2,000 new medical graduates each year, including those from abroad.
The president said that this year the Directorate-General for Higher Education conducted a study on the need for doctors in the country and concluded that Portugal needs 15 to 30 new vacancies in medical schools.
“The University of Aveiro will start (a new course) with 40 places and then double or triple those places (in the following years),” the president added.
Carlos Cortes warned that last year there were more than 400 vacancies in the profession, a figure he said was “growing year by year”, which is why “measures need to be taken now, not 15 years from now”.
He stressed: “The increase in vacancies and the creation of new departments will only allow specialist doctors to join the SNS in 15 years. The prime minister’s promise will not solve the problems of the SNS today, but will only push the problems forward.”
Another measure proposed by Carlos Cortes is to publish hospital vacancies in this specialty in February or March, before doctors complete their specialization, criticizing the “unfortunate delays of the ULS (local health units) in the competitive process.”
He concluded: “Doctors completed their professional work in April, and in August many of them were not even contacted through SNS (…). Private hospitals and foreign hospitals did not wait until August to recruit doctors to work on their staff.”
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