The president of the Portuguese Medical Association (Ordem dos Médicos) considered today that the proposal of the commission that estimated the training needs in Medicine, proposing a 1% to 2% increase in vacancies, is “perfectly accommodating” for both universities and hospitals.
“There is talk of an increase of between 1% and 2% per year. Well, around 1,500 medical students finish every year (…). As they analyzed eight faculties, if I’m not mistaken, 1% is 15. So it will be between 15 and 30, which divided by eight faculties is two to four students. For me, it doesn’t mean an increase (…) it means maintaining this line,” Carlos Cortes told Lusa.
He was speaking about the proposal of the working group appointed by the previous government to estimate the training needs in medicine in Portugal over the next ten years, reported today by the newspaper Publico.
According to the newspaper, the working group believes that Portugal will need to train around 10,700 more doctors over the next 12 years and, in order to achieve this goal, the recommendation is to increase the number of places on medical courses by between 1% and 2% per year until 2034.
Questioned by Lusa, Carlos Cortes said that this increase is a continuation of what has happened in recent years.
“Every year there are variations, some years there are a little more [vacancies in the faculties], others a little less. This is a perfectly accommodating increase in the existing faculties and also, later, in terms of specialty vacancies.”
The president of the Portuguese Medical Association said that this increase will not solve the problem of the lack of doctors in the National Health Service (SNS), stressing that “there are hundreds of vacancies left over every year”.
“The big problem in Portugal at the moment is the lack of attractiveness of the National Health Service. That’s where we need to invest,” he said.
Carlos Cortes also considered that “the great challenge” of the new Minister of Health will be “to create working conditions, training conditions, conditions of access to research”, adding that “remuneration issues, but not only that, are obviously important for the SNS to once again be a career and life goal for doctors”.
According to official figures released in November last year, the competition to train specialist doctors ended with more than 400 vacancies unfilled.
The Central Administration of the Health System (ACSS) revealed that 1,836 of the 2,242 vacancies were filled.
The ACSS acknowledged as a “cause for concern” the decrease in choices for the Internal Medicine specialty, where only 104 of the 248 vacancies were filled, and this number was “only partially offset by the admission of 68 candidates to the Intensive Care Medicine specialty”.
According to figures released at the time by the Independent Doctors’ Union (SIM), 51 vacancies for medical internships remained unfilled in 2021, a figure that rose to 161 in 2022.
