More than 400 vacancies remained unfilled in a competition to select specialties, the Independent Doctors’ Union (SIM) said this Saturday, in a result it deemed a “hecatomb” for the National Health Service.
“The selection of specializations has been completed and out of 2,330 candidates, 501 have decided not to select any vacancies, leaving 419 vacancies remaining,” SIM said in a statement.
According to the union led by Roque da Cunha, 51 medical internship vacancies remained unfilled in 2021, rising to 161 in 2022.
“This is a predictable and declared disaster,” said SIM, one of two unions involved in talks with the government over doctors’ careers and pay that have been going on for months, with dozens of meetings ending without an agreement.
According to SIM, vacancies not selected by new doctors account for 18.2% of the total number of places put up for competition, and in some specialties they reach “unprecedented figures”.
The union pointed to examples of general and family medicine (family doctors), internal medicine, public health and clinical pathology, and added that in Lisbon and the Tagus Valley region, 178 vacancies remained unfilled.
“Here we see the attractiveness of working in the National Health Service at a time when all medical human resources need to be used,” the unions complained.