According to the union structure, starting September 7, the unit intends to open a Complementary Care Service (SAC) at the Fernão Magalhães Health Center to respond to acute illness in the city of Coimbra, operating on weekends, holidays, and bridge days, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
“For the operation of this new service, the ULS administration intends to unilaterally impose that care be provided by all nurses from the Functional Units, Family Health Units (USF), and Personalized Health Care Units (UCSP) of all Health Centers in the city, as overtime work,” the union accused in a statement.
The SEP considered that “the nursing teams of the functional units in the city of Coimbra are, like all others nationwide, working at minimum limits, considering the number of nurses needed to provide quality and safe nursing care.”
The SEP also said that “the elaboration of a scheduled overtime work schedule, besides being illegal, distorts the concept of overtime hours, which should only be performed to meet imperative and exceptional service needs.”
“The opening of this service will unacceptably be carried out without considering the opinion of the professionals. Thus, imposing more working hours, being an irresponsible measure, can cause situations of exhaustion or burnout, as has been observed in the profession,” the statement reads.
According to the union, the unilateral imposition of this type of service on professionals “is another unequivocal demonstration of the monstrosity of the size of this ULS, the largest in the country, and of the ULS legal model itself, in which primary health care is not considered for its main mission: health promotion and disease prevention.”
For the opening of such a service, the union structure said that ULS Coimbra, the Ministry of Health, and the Government “should have timely and planned to hire nurses, not depending on the overtime burden of those currently working.”
The Lusa agency tried to obtain a reaction from ULS Coimbra to the SEP’s accusations by email in the early afternoon, but had not received a response by 5:25 PM.
