The Portuguese Medical Association (OM) today requested information from the Hospital de Santa Maria to carry out a detailed report on the care situation in the gynecology and obstetrics service, the staff said today after a “technical visit” to the unit.
“We have requested a set of documents from the hospital that will be sent to us and from there the College of Gynecology and Obstetrics [of OM] will prepare a detailed report on the existential situation of the hospital, will send it to the staff and then I will develop the appropriate steps according to the conclusions,” said Carlos Cortes.
Speaking to journalists after a meeting with the clinical management, the Board of Directors and doctors about the functioning of the obstetrics emergency, the president recalled that “there are difficulties in the vast majority of hospitals, not to say in all hospitals of the National Health Service [SNS]”, and stressed that the Hospital de Santa Maria “obviously, is a focus of concern of the Order of Doctors”.
Joining Carlos Cortes was the president of the OM’s gynecology and obstetrics college, João Bernardes, who said he had encountered difficulties in the obstetrics service.
“Everyone is making an effort to solve the difficulties we have, the difficulties at the obstetric level, not only of this hospital. They are national difficulties, more in the southern region, in Lisbon and Vale do Tejo”, he stressed.
João Bernardes noted that the important thing is “to continue working hard on the issue of motivating doctors to stay in the NHS”.
“Some units are experiencing specific difficulties and when this happens our role is to help find solutions, but also to ensure that clinical safety is guaranteed and the training of interns is guaranteed,” he said.
“At the moment, we are all working towards that and we came here to collect data, to ask for data to make a report,” he added.
He added that a new meeting will be scheduled at Santa Maria Hospital to assess the conditions of training in obstetrics.
The executive board of the SNS announced in May that the delivery room of Santa Maria hospital will close for works from August 1 until September, leaving the services concentrated at Hospital S. Francisco Xavier (Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Ocidental), a measure that prompted criticism from the then director of the service, Diogo Ayres de Campos, who was later exonerated.
