The government on Thursday approved in its final terms the decree law providing for an exceptional and temporary arrangement for the recognition of foreign academic degrees in medicine for the purpose of employing doctors for the National Health Service (SNS).
The diploma had already been approved by the government in July, but the Council of Ministers approved the final formulation on Thursday.
In June, the Health Ministry admitted to hiring foreign doctors, a possibility that would be evaluated based on the results of tenders and the recruitment of specialists by the SNS units themselves.
In July, at the end of the meeting of the Council of Ministers that approved the first version of the diploma, the Minister of the Presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva, stressed that the new legislation would make it possible to respond to the lack of professionals in some areas, such as healthcare.
In Parliament, the Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro announced the recruitment of 200 to 300 doctors from Latin America to work for three years in health centers in the regions of Alentejo, Algarve and Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, after Jornal de Notícias reported that the government was preparing to employ 300 Cuban doctors for the SNS.
The Order of Physicians challenges the automatic recognition, at the secretariat, of foreign medical specialties and defends its validation by juries based on the criteria used to validate medical specialties in Portugal.
The envisaged exceptional and temporary regime – of specific recognition of foreign academic degrees in the field of medicine, aimed at doctors who come to work with the SNS – is part of the decree-law approved in its final formulation on Thursday, which sets up the legal regime changes from the recognition of academic degrees and diplomas of higher education awarded by foreign institutions.
The diploma believes that this recognition is especially relevant “for the purpose of recruiting doctorates by institutions of the national scientific and technological system,” said the communiqué of the meeting of the Council of Ministers next Thursday.
The same decree-law also provides for the automatic recognition of a foreign academic degree or diploma recognized by another member state of the European Union.
On Thursday, the Council of Ministers also approved in final terms the decree law that “defines the minimum requirements for scientific training appropriate to the fields of expertise of the different recruitment groups for the selection of professors with post-Bologna courses in hiring procedures”.
Source: DN
