A plan scheduled for delivery today to the Minister of Health by the Platform of Young Health Professionals, comprising nine entities, recommends the establishment of programs to prevent burnout and promote workplace well-being, as well as a pilot project for organizing more sustainable work schedules.
The document highlights “critical challenges” such as contractual insecurity, lack of career progression, alarming levels of stress and burnout, and increasing emigration of qualified professionals.
Findings from a Barometer conducted by the platform indicate that only 10% of young professionals are satisfied with their working conditions, with over 60% stating their schedules do not allow for a satisfactory work-life balance.
The platform urges the Government to gradually implement the proposed measures between 2025 and 2028, with the creation of a technical support structure and a public panel for monitoring indicators.
“Young health professionals continue to enter the system with strong vocation and sense of mission, but soon face a scenario of undervaluation and instability. We cannot continue training talent for export or exhaustion,” says Lucas Chambel, a representative of the platform.
The document is organized around five intervention areas: careers, remuneration, and contractual conditions; strategic planning and human resources management; continuous training and professional development; well-being, mental health, and work-life balance; and transdisciplinarity, innovation, and participation.
Proposals to be presented to the Minister of Health include revising career statutes and evaluation mechanisms, and establishing a transversal regulatory base for health careers, with specific funding for updating salary structures included in the 2027 State Budget.
They also advocate for the creation of a multidisciplinary salary grid for early-career professionals, establishing a “common reference” salary base adjusted to qualification level and technical complexity, applicable to all health professions requiring higher education, with mechanisms for valuing experience and differentiation.
To define the base salary grid by the end of 2026, they propose forming an interministerial committee (Health, Finance, Public Administration). They also call for legislative revisions of the decrees regulating special health careers, extending their application to currently unprotected categories.
To progressively eliminate contractual insecurity, they suggest replacing, over five years, service contracts with “stable and protected” employment contracts, preferably indefinite-term contracts that respect each entity’s legal nature. If not feasible, they should be replaced with fixed-term contracts “with reinforced stability and progression guarantees.”
Another suggestion is the creation of specific careers for health professions not yet integrated into public administration career schemes, citing examples such as dentists, nutritionists, psychologists, veterinarians, physiotherapists, and speech therapists.
They also request quotas for young professionals’ access to technical and scientific coordination roles and propose a special incentive scheme to attract young professionals to priority regions, suggesting a national program — “Live and Work in the Interior” — with at least a 40% salary increase during the first five years of placement.
In the training sector, they propose a financial incentive mechanism for health institutions promoting training and a tax incentive, through income tax, for individual and collective training expenses.
