FNAM, Portugal’s militant federation of doctors, has accused the Ministry of Health of taking so long to place specialists in the state health system that it risks losing them altogether.
Specialist doctors graduated in October – and were ready then and there for placement within the SNS healthcare system.
Come December and this still has not happened.
Now, according to FNAM, even the ‘legal deadline’ for these placements has expired.
SIM – the independent syndicate of doctors (a body generally a great deal less militant than FNAM) – has denounced the situation, suggesting it will have “direct consequences for patient safety and access to healthcare”.
As anyone who has been reading the news recently will be aware, access to healthcare is already so exceptionally complicated that people are spending up to 17-hours in certain A&E departments, just waiting to see a doctor. If someone is admitted with damage to their eyes (for an example), they are invariably told there is no ophthalmologist on duty – and care given is less than recommended.
This is what the two doctors’ syndicates are trying to talk about: a situation in which they see the relentless hollowing out of health service expertise, to the point that it will no longer serve the needs of the population.
In a statement sent out to newsrooms, FNAM points out that the delay in placing much-needed specialists “has no technical or administrative justification”. Is it simply the “serious failure of planning, management and political responsibility” that FNAM calls it – or is it something more insidious?
FNAM claims that among professionals waiting to be placed are “specialties critical to the SNS health service” – namely more than 50 general practitioners, more than 30 internal medicine doctors, 16 obstetricians, 12 psychiatrists, and 11 pediatricians.
These professionals could alleviate the backlog of closed emergency services and reduce catastrophic waiting times.
“The country risks wasting highly qualified doctors, trained over more than a decade with public investment, at a time when the SNS state health service is facing one of the biggest human resources crises in its history,” FNAM insists.
The federation also fears that this institutional dillydallying will be seen by young specialists as a sign that the state trains doctors, publicly acknowledges their shortage, but then “refuses to comply with legislation and the duty to hire them in a timely manner.”
Result: an “exodus to the private sector or abroad, deliberately worsening the weakening of the SNS”, accuses FNAM, which estimates that, on average, four doctors “leave the SNS” every day.
“Each day of delay represents doctors lost by the SNS and healthcare that is no longer provided to the population.
“FNAM demands that the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, immediately assume political responsibility for this situation and comply with the law, proceeding with the urgent opening of the recruitment process for specialist doctors,” the federation concludes.
Source: LUSA
