In statements to the Lusa agency about Family Doctor's Day, which is celebrated today, the president of the Order of Physicians (OM), Carlos Cortes, recalled the importance of General and Family Medicine (MGF) in healthcare, not only for the activity it performs, but because it ends up "relieving the hospitals".

"It has a very large weight in healthcare in Portugal (...) not only for its direct activity in literacy, in promotion, in prevention, in humanistic medicine, in curative medicine and in the accompaniment of the person, their family and the community, but also because it relieves the pressure on hospitals", he said, stressing: "if there is qualified primary healthcare, the patients' health problems will not worsen".

In early May 2024, 9,003 physicians with the MGF specialty were registered with the Order of Physicians, most of them women (5,788). Of those registered, over 45% (4,115) are over 65 years old and 18% are over 70 years old.

The president stressed that the aging of these specialists is related to the lack of attractiveness of the career: "as the poor working conditions for physicians, the poor training conditions, there are no project developments, namely in research".

Although he points out that this is a trade union matter, the president acknowledges the importance of "remunerative dignity".

The OM figures indicate that MGF is the specialty that has had the most vacancies to fill in recent years, a reality that the Order considers "worrying".

In 2023, of the 617 vacancies available, 165 (26.7%) remained unfilled.

"Despite the fact that the Order of Physicians has managed to identify, from a training point of view, a set of vacancies for the specialty, they have remained vacant, mainly (...) due to the lack of attractiveness", he noted.

The president also stressed the importance of MGF in "proximity medicine", revealing that this was the specialty that "evolved the most and best in recent decades".

Since 2020, 2,704 vacancies have been opened for this specialty, a growth in this period of over 25% in the number of vacancies. However, especially in the last two years, many have remained empty.

In turn, the president of the Portuguese Association of General and Family Medicine (APMGF), Nuno Jacinto, stressed the "generational gap" of these specialists: "there are many family physicians over 60 years old and many between 45 and under".

He attributed this situation to the way in which entry into the medical course was oriented over the years, but agreed that the main cause is the lack of attractiveness of the National Health Service (SNS).

"Now, it is not only the MGF specialists who do not choose any vacancy, it is also the colleagues at the beginning of their internship who prefer not to even do the internship and end up doing other things", he warned.

Asked whether the generalization of Family Health Units (USF) model B (with extra payments for objectives) can help attract more specialists, he said that what happened "was not a true generalization of what existed".

"We changed the rules for calculating incentives, the way these indicators are applied to remuneration and we changed several things that, on the one hand, make it difficult to access these incentives and, on the other hand, create at least questionable rules", said the official, giving the example of the relationship between the remuneration of all USF professionals and the prescription of exams and medications.

"This means that these teams cannot reach where the others were [from the previous ULS] and the others risk lowering what they had (...). It ends up not pleasing anyone", he insisted.

He said that "the panorama remains unattractive" and, even with the measures taken so far, he considered that it is not expected that there will be changes in terms of possible vacancies in the next competition.

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