With the row over doctors’ hours continuing, the president of the Algarve’s hospitals management team, Dr Pedro Nunes has said he is leaving "in a matter of days."
Recent sharp criticism from Jaime Mendes of the Medical Council, Southern Region, included comments in a speech to a group of trainee doctors that they can expect to work an illegal number hours and face problems if they do not agree to do so.
Mendes’ comments referred to young doctors in training working 24-hour shifts in the emergency department.
Dr Nunes commented that despite this criticism, which he said was unjuustified and politically motivate, ‘most employees’ will miss him when he is gone and that people then can stop telling lies about him.
"I'm leaving. It's just a matter of days before someone is appointed to replace me,” said Dr Nunes in an interview with Sul Informaçao.
As for the 24-hour shift complaint, this had been made by a young doctor in training, but Nunes said "I never forced anyone to do 24-hour shifts, that's a lie,” adding that such hours are banned by the EU as well as Portugal’s Medical Council.
Another accusation that Dr Nunes refutes is that there is a climate of fear and a poor working environment in the hospitals for which he is responsible.
Dr Nunes certainly has had his critics from day one, mainly to do with pushing through an agenda agreed during the years of austerity when inefficiencies needed ironing out, central purchasing needed to be tidied up, cuts made and doctors’ contracts harmonised.
The Director’s combative approach alienated many doctors and qualified medical staff who left the region’s national health service, thus creating more vacancies which became harder and harder to fill due to poor remuneration and the Algarve Hospitals Group's reputation for draconian management, whether justified or not.
