A report by Jornal de Notícias this week has revealed that maternity units in the Algarve are so short of medical staff that paediatricians and obstetricians from other parts of Portugal are being paid around €50 per hour to work 24-hour to 48-hour shifts – this comes to around €2,400 per weekend.
Doctors, especially from the north, take advantage of low-cost flights from Porto to Faro to travel south for a weekend and make some extra money, the paper says.
This happens with all medical specialties during the summer, according to the independent doctors’ union (SIM), but is becoming a year-round tendency for paediatricians and obstetricians.
Jorge Roque da Cunha from the doctors’ union says this is having an adverse effect on the doctors who work in the region all year long.
“Some doctors are coming here to make money while working under doctors who do not even earn half of what the former are earning. And this poses a serious problem,” he told JN.
The Algarve’s hospital board (CHUA) boils it down to a case of “supply and demand”.
“The sums we pay are variable. There is a thing called supply and demand, and evidently when it comes to some specialties in which there is a shortage of doctors, the sums (we pay) are higher,” Ana Paula Gonçalves, head of CHUA, told JN.
The news follows a case where a newborn baby had to be revived at Portimão Hospital after being delivered by an anaesthetist, as there were no paediatricians working at the hospital at the time (click here).
michael.bruxo@algarveresident.com
