Portugal approves less than half of medical candidates — DNOTICIAS.PT
Portugal, in the last three years, 42.2% of requests from candidates for doctors came from countries, three quarters of which were Brazilian, according to data from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Foreign Education (MCTES).
Since 2019 – the year from which there are centralized data -, Portugal has received a total of 1,674 requests for entry by foreigners to practice medicine, having granted 706 (until December 14, 2021).
Anyone applying for any medical practice in Portugal has to fulfill two requirements to enroll in the Portuguese Medical Association: to have the course/degree recognized by one of the eight Portuguese medical schools and to demonstrate that they can communicate in Portuguese.
A doctor from any country in the European Union is recognized in Portugal, under EU legislation — and, therefore, to register with the Ordem dos Médicos, he will have to carry out a medical communication test.
However, for those who come from other places — and although the law recognizing academic degrees and higher education diplomas awarded by foreign institutions apply to other foreign institutions, Moldova, Norway, United Kingdom, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine – -, this recognition is conditional, by the entity that regulates the medical activity, to the assessment of medical, clinical and linguistic academic knowledge, ensured, first, by the Portuguese medical schools and, later, by the Ordem dos Médicos, with a proof of medical communication .
The foreign candidates with a higher rate of passing doctors are Spaniards (84.4% of requests for proportionals), followed by Ukrainians (78.8%), Germans (70%) and Italians (66.2%).
Among the 74.7% of applications submitted by Brazilians, only 42.7% were approved – even though these represent three quarters of the total number of applications approved (706).
In the last three years, all medical candidates from three countries — Cuba, Guinea-Bissau and Venezuela — were turned down. And only one of the 29 requests made by Angolan citizens was approved.
“The entire qualification process is carried out by medical schools” and aims to ensure recognized and approved candidates” to practice “a quality medicine space” in Portugal (or, later, in the community), with the same ” Standard of demand imposed on national students, the president of the Council of Portuguese Medical Schools (CEMP), Henrique Cyrne Carvalho, told Lusa.
With the exception of candidates from countries where Portuguese is the official language, all of them start taking a communication test.
Passing this test — and then with all the candidates who did not need a curriculum assessment –, the next step is to take a curriculum assessment, with a “written test in the following areas of knowledge”, responsibility of the major medical schools (in change and by area).
“It’s a national assessment, the test is the same for everyone”, emphasizes Cyrne Carvalho. It is in this specific knowledge test that “around half” of the candidates pass the test.
The candidates who apply later take a “test, with the patient, called ‘face test’, in each of the proposals presented. In this, the percentage of leads “is flagrantly lower”, highlights the also director of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar from the University of Porto.
Finally, candidates who present a master’s thesis also have students who leave medical courses with a master’s degree.
Having concluded the process of medical schools with general approval – which takes “an entire calendar year”, CEMP’s accounting -, they can register for the practice of clinic, but not without medical communication, it is by the Order of Doctors and which involves another different actor: Camões, an institute supervised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“If necessary, it is necessary to speak with the sick and write in the diaries of the Order to speak, it cannot exercise. Justifies Baston dos Médicos, Miguel Guimarães, stating that “of demand [da prova] It’s not very high.”
Even so, according to the Order itself, in 2021, of the 62 candidates for the medical communication test, 11 were on the way — 11 who had already been evaluated in tests, including communication, by the various medical schools.