Health professionals are leaving the palliative care sector to take up better paid jobs that offer performance incentives.
This is the warning ‘formalised’ in an Open Letter today to the Ministry of Health, SNS national health service, parliament and parliamentary groups.
Community palliative care support teams (ECSCP) – responsible for providing home care to patients in the advanced stages of illness – suggest changes must come if this vital service is to survive.
The letter, spearheaded by Dr Tânia Caeiro – coordinator of the Cascais ECSCP team, and signed by members of more than 20 of the 33 existing teams – advocates the transformation of ECSCPs into functional units. The change “would allow for the contractualisation of objectives with access to remuneration incentives, similar to what happens in family health units”, say signatories.
The absence of specific measures for these teams has exacerbated “a significant wage asymmetry”, especially after the incentives created in 2024 for other areas of primary health care. ‘
“We have seen doctors and nurses leaving due to inferior working conditions,” the letter reiterates.
Lack of resources in this ‘niche’ but keenly needed sector is nothing new. The Portuguese Palliative Care Observatory pointed out in 2023 that only 36% of teams had at least one full-time doctor. At the end of that year, national coverage of these responses was limited to 53%, with some ECSCPs not even meeting minimum requirements to operate.
The National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) has joined in the criticism, denouncing unequal treatment and poor working conditions.
The federation is calling for the implementation of the resolution approved in February by parliament, which recommended the strengthening of community palliative care. Both the Order of Physicians and the Portuguese Association for Palliative Care have already expressed their support for the creation of functional units.
In response, the executive board of the SNS merely stated that the matter would be referred to the future National Commission for Palliative Care, a body that has not yet even been assigned a ‘leader’.
Source material: ZAP citing Público
