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The Medicine course at the Catholic University was authorized to operate by the Higher Education Assessment and Accreditation Agency (A3ES). The accreditation comes approximately one year after a first proposal, opposed by the Ordem dos Médicos, was rejected by the same entity. The university can receive students in this course already in the academic year that now begins.
The accreditation of the Catholic Medicine course is confirmed by the PUBLIC by the president of A3ES, Alberto Amaral. The decision was made this week by the higher education regulator. The information had been initially advanced, on Tuesday night, by the dean of that university, Isabel Capeloa Gil, in a post on Twitter.
According to Amaral, the medicine course at the Catholic University is accredited “with conditions” for a period of one year, since “it is normal whenever a new course appears.” If, after one year of operation, that higher education demonstrates compliance with all the standards imposed by law and by A3ES, the accreditation will be renewed. Usually for a period of three years.
Taking into account that the Catholic University is a private institution, you can open applications for your courses at any time of the year – contrary to what happens in public ones, where access to integrated degrees and masters is done exclusively in the summer. through the national access system contest, the results of which will be known later this month. Therefore, if the university so wishes, it may receive medical students in this academic year.
At the end of last year, A3ES had failed the first proposal to open the new medical course presented by the Catholic University. At that time, the Medical Association had given a negative opinion to that training. At the same time, the university submitted a new proposal, which has now been approved by the accrediting agency.
This decision comes the same year that the Ministry of Science and Higher Education tried to get public universities to increase the number of vacancies for the training of doctors. None of the 215 places that could have been added to the offer of educational institutions have been opened. After this decision of the medical schools, Minister Manuel Heitor Heitor said that he had no doubts that “more doctors are needed in the country”, revealing that he had maintained contacts in this regard with the public universities of Aveiro and Évora and also with the Catholic University. .
The Catholic course will be the first medical course at a private university. In the last decade, A3ES received 12 proposals for the opening of new higher medical courses, all from private institutions. None have been approved. The Lusófona University tried to do a medicine course in 2010, the Fernando Pessoa University, in Porto, presented proposals in 2010 and 2012 and the European University competed in 2015 and 2017. But no institution was so insistent in trying to do a medicine course as the Polytechnic and University Higher Education Cooperative (CESPU), based in Gandra, a city in the municipality of Paredes. This institution, which already has a course in Dental Medicine, for example, presented six proposals for Medicine courses, the first of which dates from 2009 and was carried out in partnership with the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro.
A3ES is a public body that, since 2009, has been in charge of evaluating all existing higher education courses and institutions, as well as authorizing the creation of new courses. The criteria for the approval of a degree in Medicine are similar to those of other higher education courses, evaluating the quality of the curriculum, the facilities or the qualification of the teaching staff, for example. In the case of Medicine, there is an additional requirement that requires ensuring the existence of adequate health units for the education received by students. The legislation establishes that, in the courses in which there is a professional order, an opinion must be issued, which is taken into account in the decision of the A3ES Board of Directors, but is not binding.
