“It is urgent to begin swift and pragmatic negotiations, to avoid the chaos that occurred in 2023, with Emergency Services closing in dominoes from North to South of the country, due to a lack of doctors,” said the FNAM.
The National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) sent a request for an urgent meeting to begin dialogue with the new Minister of Health, which is expected to be more fruitful than the negotiations with the previous minister, Manuel Pizarro.
In a statement, FNAM said that “it will be allied with all measures that have the capacity to retain and attract doctors to the SNS, with fair salaries and decent working conditions, in order to reverse the departure of doctors to the private sector and emigration . There is no time to waste and negotiations must begin immediately.”
“To this end, it is urgent to begin swift and pragmatic negotiations, to avoid the chaos that occurred in 2023, with Emergency Services closing in dominoes from North to South of the country, due to a lack of doctors. Solutions are still needed so that the SNS guarantees family doctors for the entire population, as well as timely consultations and surgeries in the SNS, instead of vouchers for consultations and surgeries in the private sector”, highlighted the federation.
In the statement, FNAM recalls that it presented “solutions to retain doctors in the SNS, namely the restoration of the 35-hour week and 12 hours of weekly work in the emergency service, the resizing of family doctors’ user lists to 1,500 users and the replacement of the permanent availability supplement for public health”.
“The FNAM proposal also focuses on an Exclusive Dedication regime, optional and duly increased for all SNS doctors, replacing the current Full Dedication regime, implemented by the previous Government, which violates the Constitution and European labor directives” , stressed the federation.
In addition to these matters, for FNAM it is also essential “the reintegration of interns into the medical career, the salary increase of all doctors, without exception, including those with individual employment contracts pre-2013, the replacement of vacation days taken during the intervention by the troika, as well as the review of parental protection measures for doctors”.
The federation also said that “the new Government and the new Minister of Health are responsible for finally valuing the medical career and recovering the NHS as one of the pillars of our democracy and in accordance with its constitutional precepts: accessible, universal and of quality for the entire population”.
