The guarantee was given this Saturday by the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, who said that, in the last competition for family doctors, 28% of the vacancies were filled.
The Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, said this Saturday that in the last competition for family doctors, 28% of the vacancies were filled and promised that next year the competitions will have other incentives.
The second part of the competition for family doctors will be held but, assured Ana Paula Martins, the Government is already working “on what will be next year’s competition, because associated with the competition there must be another type of incentive”. “Because otherwise we will have great difficulty in having doctors” in some areas, he said.
The minister was speaking to journalists after the closing ceremony of the 27th congress of the Order of Doctors, which took place over two days in Lisbon.
When speaking to doctors, the minister referred to difficult times arising from new challenges and spoke of the obligation to find solutions to problems, an example of these problems being the issue of vacancies for General and Family Medicine.
It is necessary, he said, to work with everyone to find answers to the fact that young doctors do not want to establish themselves in the National Health Service (SNS). “The issue cannot continue to be postponed,” he said.
When questioned later by journalists, the minister returned to the topic, stating that the competition was not exactly a failure and that last year 32% of the vacancies were filled and this year, in the first phase, 28%.
“I have already assumed that there was a problem with the methodology, which was changed, and at this moment we are in a position to have national competitions again and we will publish the map with the second wave competitions in the next few days”, he said.
At the beginning of the month, in parliament, Ana Paula Martins announced that the competition for hiring General and Family Medicine doctors for the SNS would once again be national, acknowledging that the last one “did not go well”.
The PSD/CDS-PP Government changed the hiring rules in June, putting an end to centralized competitions and allowing each Local Health Unit to hold its competitions, for a total of 2,200 authorized vacancies.
Today the minister recalled this change but went further stating that it is necessary to reflect, with the OM but also with the associations representing General and Family Medicine and with young specialists, “who graduate and who end up not competing for vacancies in certain locations.”
“It’s not for the whole country, it’s mainly Lisbon and the Tagus Valley, the South, and the Center also with some problems”, he stated.
And he added: “We have to think about what we can do to make these young specialists feel that in the SUS they can have their life project. And this includes issues such as having a training program for the first five years, providing training possibilities within and outside the country, also possibilities for remuneration linked to performance.”
Ana Paula Martins noted in this matter the “determining role” of local authorities, which have made an effort to even finance part of the doctors’ living costs.
“I don’t have a magic solution. It has to be found with doctors and listening to younger people”, he said, adding that in hospital specialties there have been no major difficulties and that there is even a situation where “several doctors knock on the door” of the SUS to to go back.
This year there was a quota of 250 doctors that was immediately filled, the program for doctors after 70 years of age was immediately exhausted, “and at the moment I have 50 specialist doctors in various areas, from the hospital area, who would like to return to the SNS”, he said .
With Lusa
