The Minister of Health said this Friday that the shortage of doctors in the National Health Service (SNS) is a difficulty that will persist for the next two to three years until the problem is structurally resolved.
“In the next two to three years, we will still have some difficulties that we will have to deal with, sacrificing the professionals themselves week after week, but structurally we will solve the problem after a while,” Manuel Pizarro told reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration of the Hospital de Lagos, in the district of Faro.
The minister said the government was working to improve the level of training by opening more jobs for doctors in general and specialty training, but acknowledged that the shortage of doctors is a problem across the country, which is “more in the Algarve, a region where it is difficult to find doctors due to higher cost of living.
“The cost of housing is higher and makes it difficult to attract specialists,” he said.
According to the official, the problem of the shortage of medical workers is being addressed by the government, namely “the training of specialists, a very relevant aspect, the opening of more vacancies for the training of doctors in general and specialist doctors in particular “., most of them in the Algarve and the strengthening of the functioning of the medical course at the University of the Algarve.
In addition to that, he says, expanding nursing education in the Algarve “is a strategy that will ultimately certainly enable us to better deal with this challenge.”
The Minister stressed the importance of opening more vacancies for the training of doctors as a “strategic means to better cope with this difficulty in the future”, to which is added “joint cooperation with municipal councils in the decision on housing.”
According to Manuel Pizarro, as of January 2023, “134 doctors will be trained in general and several dozen, the largest number of doctors ever, will be trained in their specialty at the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve (CHUA) as well as in primary care. -health care. care”.
The Minister noted that in order to retain specialists in the Algarve region, it is necessary to create a new hospital infrastructure: “I am sure that in such a modern hospital it is easier to retain doctors, nurses or other specialists than it was in an old hospital, in a building of 500 years.”
Manuel Pizarro said that the construction of the new Central Hospital in the Algarve “will also help to find professionals in the region, and this process has started again and will develop throughout 2023.”
Asked about service restrictions at hospitals in Santarém and Torres Novas, the minister said the government “plans to take the necessary steps to end these restrictions.”
Manuel Pizarro opened this Friday the Terras do Infante hospital in Lagos, an infrastructure that was formerly a private division and became part of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve in January, along with the hospitals in Faro and Portimão.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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