Occupational doctors limited to 150 hours per month
Portugal has about 1,200 occupational medicine doctors, an aged class that is prohibited by law to work more than 150 hours per month. The order of doctors considers limitation a « perfect absurdity. »
« Unlike any other specialty – and I have serious doubts of the legality of this – occupational medicine is the only one that has a weekly working time limit. By law, the occupational doctor can only exercise 37.5 hours a week, » says the president of the Occupational Medical College of the Order of Doctors.
At issue is the legal regime for promoting occupational safety and health, a 2009 law that determines that occupational doctors “it is prohibited to ensure health surveillance of a number of workers to which more than 150 hours of activity per month”, being subject to a serious offense in case of non -compliance with this limit.
If there was no legal limit of 37.5 hours per week, the current lack of occupational medicine experts would cease to exist in the country, Maria José Almeida told Lusa Agency.
« If an occupational doctor could work the same hours than any other doctor from another specialty, there would no longer be this limitation » of the lack of experts, said the president of the College of Order.
This is also a specialty with an average high ages and with higher concentration in urban centers and coastline.
According to the Green Book of the Future of Occupational Safety and Health, it is one of the most aged specialties, with a considerable proportion of doctors 60 years or older, and that is discussed with a small number of annual vacancies for the medical boarding school.
« Every year the vacancies are increasing, but we are trying, internally and with the Central Administration of the Health System (ACSS), to review our training plan to allow this number to have a substantial increase in the coming years to be able to put more doctors in the market, » said Maria José Almeida.
A study of the Order of Doctors indicates that about 50 doctors would be required to enter specialized training annually, when, in practice, the 30 are around 30.
