Minister of Health meets with unions of doctors, nurses and pharmacists

During the morning, Ana Paula Martins receives delegations from the Independent Union of Doctors and the National Federation of Doctors. In the afternoon there are meetings with the nurses’ and pharmacists’ unions.Among the demands of union structures are salary increases, better working conditions and career progression. Something that they already demanded from the previous Ministry of Health team.

Last Monday, the new holder of the Health portfolio received orders from the sector. The minister promised to evaluate, over the next two months, the proposals she collected.

“All the proposals that formally arrived at us will now be evaluated, one by one, over the next two months, because part of them does not just depend on the Ministry of Health, it depends on the Government as a whole”, Ana Paula Martins then told journalists, after the first round of dialogue with the orders of Doctors, Nurses and Pharmacists.

“The two-month deadline is not a deadline from the Ministry of Health. The two-month deadline is the deadline that the Medical Association, in its proposals, gave to the Ministry of Health so that we could respond to what was its call for collaboration”continued the ruler.

“Within 60 days we will be able to tell the orders which are the matters on which we expect the orders’ collaboration and which are the matters where, naturally, with a calendar and an agreement for the legislature, we will be able to move forward.”

Assistance response from the National Health Service

Also according to the Minister of Health, the orders were concerned about the SNS’s assistance response: “Concerned because they feel that it is necessary to provide a better response, despite the SNS having a very intense response.”

“Every day, there are many consultations, many surgeries, many interventions, but there are, in fact, as we all know, waiting lists and, naturally, professionals are the first ones interested in being able to respond to their patients. “, he emphasized. The president of the Order of Doctors, Carlos Cortes, signaled the Government’s openness to accepting proposals. In turn, the president of the Order of Nurses, Luís Filipe Barreira, warned of the lack of professionals in the National Health Service and highlighted the need to improve working conditions. Miguel Pavão, president of the Order of Dentists, considered coordination with the private sector necessary.

The minister would emphasize the need to retain professionals: “The SNS needs this reinforcement, but the country also needs to keep these professionals. And, in this context, there are several proposals that the orders consider to be important”.

“In addition to remuneration conditions, which we will later discuss with the unions, we talked a lot about lifelong training conditions, reconciling professional life with personal life, a health care organization that also includes the participation of professionals increasingly more in the programs and performance plans of health units”.

w/ Lusa