Health Minister Manuel Pizarro presents this Thursday an updated salary scale as negotiations with doctors’ unions resume. Salary increases can be as high as 49.5% for physicians who provide emergency care and choose a base schedule of 35 hours with the option to work an additional 5 hours and who decide to go full-time. These doctors will have to commit to work up to 30 kilometers from the hospital where they are based in the Lisbon metropolitan area, and agree to work 250 hours of overtime per year in both 2024 and 2025.
The document, which the CM had access to, states that medical assistants in the first position, currently having a salary of 2863.21 euros, will now have a salary of 4280.31 euros gross. The increase includes a 5.5% increase in basic remuneration, an emergency bonus of €500 and a further 25% salary bonus for choosing to commit to full commitment.
For other emergency physicians, increases range from 23.1% for junior assistants to 14.3% for senior assistants.
The document, on which the Ministry of Health’s discussions with the Independent Union of Doctors (SIM) and the National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) is based, also contains a proposal for negotiations on a new model for remuneration of doctors who do not provide emergency care services. . The salary of these assistant doctors in the first position will be from 32% to 5.6%. For graduate assistants, the minimum salary increase will be 4.8%, and for senior assistants it will be 2.5%.
The negotiations are taking place at a time when more than two thousand doctors are refusing to work overtime because they have already worked the 150 hours required by law. The Doctors in Struggle movement is making negotiations between the government and unions a condition for the resumption of overtime.
The government’s proposal already provided for the possibility of raising doctors by 60% if they work in type B family medical institutions with full dedication. However, this decision was rejected by trade unions because they did not agree that on average doctors received a 3.1% increase.
The new proposal would make the base salary the same for all doctors. Most of them will receive a salary increase of more than 5.5%.
Author: João Saramago
Source: CM Jornal
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