Four of the seven orthopedists at the Évora hospital have resigned and will leave the unit at the end of July, citing dissatisfaction with working conditions and incompatibilities with the service management, revealed today a union leader.
In statements to the Lusa agency, the Alentejo regional secretary of the Independent Union of Doctors (SIM), Armindo Ribeiro, indicated that disgruntled clinicians have already submitted their contract termination requests to the administration that of the hospital.
“They handed in their resignation letters after several warnings to the administration, because they were unhappy with the working conditions and with some positions of the service management. They were threatened until they have now complied”, he stated.
Contacted by Lusa, a source from the Central Alentejo Local Health Unit (ULSAC), to which the Hospital do EspÃrito Santo de Évora (HESE) belongs, said that the board of directors was made aware of the decision today. that of the four orthopedists.
“In view of the resignations presented, all necessary measures will be taken to ensure the proper functioning of the Orthopedics Service and the response to the population”, he stressed.
In the response to Lusa, the ULSAC source noted that, on April 23, an expression of interest was opened for the management of that service, the process of which is still ongoing.
The union leader stressed that the incompatibilities between the director and doctors began at the end of 2023 and expressed concern about the consequences of these departures.
“The orthopedics service is left with three specialists and will probably lose training capacity and, when this happens, the school finds a way for the interns to continue the specialty in other hospitals”, he warned.
One of the doctors who delivered the contract termination documents, who asked not to be identified, explained to Lusa that, last December, disgruntled clinicians met with the administration to convey to him who disagreed with the way the service was conducted.
At that time, he added, they delivered to the administration a letter signed by six of the seven specialists from the Orthopedics Service requesting that the person responsible for the service “leave his role as director, but continue as an orthopedist ” and, in February of this year, they sent another letter in which they admitted moving forward with the termination.
ANTÓNIO PEDRO SANTOS/LUSA
Now, “we took this step because we think no one takes us seriously, they think we’re joking and it’s a tantrum, but it’s not”, he highlighted, adding that doctors They have already started to be contacted by other services to be hired.
According to the clinician, the administration conveyed to the doctors that it did not understand the dissatisfaction, but that, “having an entire team against the management, the service was not manageable and that the only solution was to make an expression of interest to the management, which implies the opening of a competition”.
The clinician said that the competition opened four or five weeks ago, and that the current director and another of the doctors competed, highlighting that, until now, “we don’t even know officially what the list of candidates is, because has not yet been published.”
“The service has everything it needs to function as it should. It is made up mostly of new people, each person does their own area, we have a new hospital under construction and we have a spectacular team, we just don’t We get along well with the director,” he said.
Pointing out that the terminations of the contracts of the four doctors, one of whom “claimed just cause”, were delivered on Friday, the specialist noted that the clinicians will now work for another two months, meaning they will leave at the beginning of August.
“The only thing that didn’t resign was the director of the service, a recent specialist, who was the director’s intern, and the oldest specialist who is six months away from retirement, but who is in solidarity with us” , he stressed.
The doctor also alleged that the disgruntled clinicians worked “for six months with a terrible environment at the service, with frequent arguments, total disorganization” and gave an example: “We were forced by the director to cancel vacations and doing emergency banking, even with approved vacations”, he highlighted.
“The four doctors who terminated their contracts operated on more than 800 patients overall last year, which represents 64% of patients operated on in Orthopedics. The service loses a lot with the Our departure, from the outset, was the possibility of having a differentiated team in each anatomical area”, he added.
The HESE Orthopedics Service has 47 beds distributed across two wings.
