On the other hand, he cites the OECD report published this week, in which Portugal is compared with other countries and which shows that “doctors in Portugal have a loss of purchasing power unparalleled in Europe”. “We are below the OECD average, with countries like Lithuania and Estonia ahead of us. But in terms of purchasing power, we are far from the standards that are practiced in the Netherlands, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and even Spain”, he says.
If, in 2012, “a doctor entering the career received 6.2 times the national minimum wage at the time, in 2027 this proportion will fall to 3.6, practically half and for more senior doctors the drop is brutal, from 11 times to 5.9 times the minimum wage”.
In his opinion, “this salary devaluation and loss of purchasing power also explains the increasing flight of doctors to the private sector and abroad, which has had incalculable costs for the country”.
The doctor explains that this congress, lasting two days, is divided into themes and, on the first day, there will be several working groups to “discuss the medical career, internship, competitions and progressions”, as well as other groups where topics that, sometimes, are rarely talked about, will be debated, such as “the prevention of violence against doctors, the improvement of parenting conditions”.
But on the table at the congress there will also be the situation of precarious employment, namely the situation of working doctors. “Fnam’s position is very clear, we argue that all doctors should be integrated into the career, including doctors providing services, because their relationship is precarious and most of them are not providing services because they wanted to, but because they were pushed out of the system. Therefore, our position is that we do not want precarious relationships, we want these doctors to be integrated into the career, but for this to happen, there must be improvements in the salary part and the recovery of the purchasing power of the class.”
Based on the work and discussion of the working groups, an activity plan will be drawn up for the next three years, which will be discussed and approved on Sunday.