Half of the vacancies for the family doctor occupied in Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, says union | National Health Service
The competition opened in June to place family employees in health centers ended with 60% of the vacancies occupied in the country and, in Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, the result was even “more critical”, since “half of the vacancies were deserted”, according to the secretary general of the Independent Union of Physicians (Sim), Jorge Roque da Cunha.
The competition opened on 17 June made available a total of 432 vacancies for specialists in general and family medicine (211) in Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, the most popular region and where in June almost a million people had no assigned family.
Roque da Cunha that there were 379 candidates (87% of the specific vacancies) but that, at the end of the process, only 60% of the vacancies were filled, with “dozens” of resistance having occurred in the meantime.
“It’s the trend of the years”, regrets the leader, who believes that the result could still get worse in the coming days, who usually gives “about 5%” of new specialists for not accepting the job.
There are two specialized competitions, each year designated for the recruitment of new jobs in Lisbon, also designated without the recruitment of family doctors, and a second competition of specialists designated for half of the jobs then opened in the health centers.
But it was to be expected that the vacancies were not all filled. Since 2018, the Government has made available a number of offers for hiring that is higher than the total number of doctors who complete a specialty in each season, captivating for the National Service
PÚBLICO tried to confirm the data advanced by SIM with the Ministry of Health, but still did not receive a response.