Roughly one in four doctors over 65, an aging class that will lead to a wave of about 5,000 people in retirement by 2030, a health workforce report released Tuesday warns.
“The current decade 2020-2030 will be marked by a large number of retirements of National Health Service (SNS) doctors working exclusively in the private sector,” researchers Pedro Pita Barros and Eduardo Costa said in a paper.
This report is part of the Department of Health Economics within the initiative for social justice, which is the result of a partnership between the Fondazione “la Caixa”, BPI and the Faculty of Economics, Finance and Management at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (New SBE).
The researchers also warn that “the problem of aging is asymmetrical across the country”: in the North, in the Center and in the autonomous regions, “the proportion of doctors over 65 is lower than the national average.”
“In addition to regional and specialty asymmetries, there is a marked deterioration over time. In 1996, about 11% of the doctors in the Order were over 65 years of age. The most recent data for December 2021 put this share at 24%,” the study says.
The analysis shows that, in terms of specialties, class aging is more pronounced in tropical medicine (88.1% of doctors over 65), in dentistry (53.8%), in pediatric surgery (43.6%), and in clinical pathology ( 43.1%), cardiothoracic surgery (42.6%) and maxillofacial surgery (40.9%).
According to the published data, this strong aging of the class “predicts a wave of retirements” in the coming years, with the average number of annual retirements expected to exceed 450 people.
Lisbon and the North, the regions with the largest number of healthcare workers, will “be hit the hardest,” the report emphasizes, in assessing that the 2030s will be marked by “significantly lower” annual retirements.
Between 2030 and 2040, on average, fewer than 250 doctors will retire per year.
The paper also adds that the rate of aging for nurses is “substantially lower” than for physicians, as less than 4% of these healthcare workers were over the age of 65 in 2019.
“The aging of healthcare workers implies an adaptation of the healthcare system. A higher proportion of aging doctors reduces the number of health workers who can work at night or in emergencies,” Pedro Pita Barros and Eduardo Costa also warn.
The approaching retirement age of a large number of physicians still poses “a major challenge to sustaining social media learning capacity,” the researchers said.
“Timely retirement planning is essential to minimize disruption to the normal functioning of the health system,” emphasizes the report, which analyzes several indicators of the health workforce between 2011 and 2022.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal

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