More than 3,300 nurses have left Portugal since the start of the pandemic in 2020, with Switzerland being the main destination country, according to data from the Nurses Association, which points to an increase in emigration in 2022.
The Nurses’ Association has received 3,364 requests for declarations for emigration since the start of 2020, and the most recent data indicate that the requests went up again in 2022, totalling 1,221. This was 308 more than in 2021 (913).
Speaking to Lusa on Tuesday, the head of the Nurses’ Association, Ana Rita Cavaco, stressed that the more than 3,300 professionals who left the country between 2020 and the end of 2022 correspond to the number of nurses trained annually by Portuguese schools.
Taking a snapshot since 2015, Ana Rita Cavaco said that around 13,000 nurses enrolled in the Nurses’ Association, but more than 15,000 emigrated.
“This proves to everyone that not only new graduates emigrate, people with a lot of experience also emigrate, specialist nurses,” she stressed.
Switzerland continues to be the country that receives the most Portuguese nurses, followed by Spain and the United Kingdom, which despite Brexit, is still one of the preferred destinations for professionals, said the Nurses’ Association.
“Thus, European countries, which have been carrying out more aggressive recruitment campaigns, remain the main destinations for Portuguese nurses, but the United Arab Emirates also receive, from year to year, more and more professionals,” the Nurses’ Association said in a statement.
The Nurses’ Association stressed that this data showed “the continued trend of emigration of nurses, despite the chronic shortage of nurses in Portugal”, to the point of wanting to hire these professionals “and there are none on the market”.
Ana Rita Cavaco explained to Lusa that Portugal trains the nurses it needs for the entire health system – the national health sector, private sector and social sector – but then there is no hiring, even though they are all needed.
If they are not hired, “they end up accepting proposals from other countries, not only in Europe, where they will earn more, where they have a perspective of career enhancement, where they are paid for their training and their speciality”, which does not happen in Portugal, she added.
She noted that there are services or beds closed due to a lack of nurses, but institutions cannot hire all the nurses they need.
On the other hand, there is the issue of fixed-term contracts, where “there is no stability, no career, no appreciation”.
“And it is curious that just now, in these last few days, a petition for the equality of nurses with public work contracts and nurses with individual work contracts went to parliament and was refused”, she lamented.
It “is the same thing as buying nurses a plane ticket,” she added.
“That’s what the government has been doing successively, offering plane tickets to nurses to go away”, she concluded.
(Helena Neves | Lusa.pt)
Source: euractiv.com
