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The Order of Nurses warned this Friday of the dismissal of nursing professionals, whose contract would end at the end of the month, at the Braga Hospital. The situation, which the president of the Order considers “bullshit”, was denounced by nurses who began to receive dismissal letters, after having fulfilled two four-month contracts of a fixed duration.
In the midst of the second wave of the pandemic, with all the country’s health services under pressure and with difficulties in hiring nurses, “as is already admitted by the authorities themselves,” Ana Rita Cavaco says that it is inadmissible that the Braga Hospital is notifying and announcing layoffs of nurses with eight months of intensive care experience.
According to various expositions received in the last hours in the Order, the nurses in question have already signed two four-month contracts with the Hospital de Braga, which leads Ana Rita Cavaco to justify the casualties as an attempt to prevent them from being recognized for their seniority and so they become part of the staff of the institution.
“It is an unacceptable, incomprehensible and irresponsible situation, given the moment we are going through,” says the Order of Nurses in a statement, stressing that this situation demonstrates, once again, the way in which nurses “are treated in Portugal”. accusing the administration of, “saving pennies”, walking “playing to fight the pandemic, putting the lives of patients at risk.” For Expreso, Ana Rita Cavaco says that 86 nurses will be in this situation, when there are only 50 vacancies left on the board.
The scenario lived in the health institution of Braga, one of the municipalities that make up the list of 121 municipalities with the highest risk of contagion by covid-19, has already been transmitted by the president of the Order of Nurses to the Secretary of State for Health , António Lacerda Sales, by SMS. “Since I couldn’t speak, I left a message,” says Ana Rita.
To Expresso, the Braga Hospital confirms that, in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, “it hired nurses in light of this exceptional regime”, but reports that the referred nurses continue to work in the hospital, “with the Board of Directors assuming efforts to convert these fixed-term contracts into permanent contracts and thus keep all the nurses hired in their jobs ”.
Work proposals from abroad are accelerated
“In the short term, neither the current nurses nor the ones to be hired will be enough to face the pandemic and provide care to the thousands of people who have had their exams, consultations and surgeries suspended, postponed and canceled,” warns the Order. dos Diseases, underlining that it cannot stop repudiating this attitude of the Hospital de Braga, “without prejudice to continuing its collaboration with the Ministry of Health in the search for solutions.”
The situation at the Hospital de Braga arises at a time when the Order is faced, “with special insistence in the last two weeks”, with requests for hiring Portuguese nurses from various European countries, including Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, which “offer free annual contracts, transportation and accommodation.”
And the proposals also come from homes. “Only in Spain there have been five contacts in recent days, from Galicia to the Canary Islands, with offers of 30 thousand euros gross per year. The Netherlands, on the other hand, is offering, in addition to the best conditions of remuneration, accommodation, transportation and linguistic training ”, said the Order in a statement in which it still reiterates to the Government the need to find mechanisms for the establishment of nurses in Portugal.
“Despite the unanimous recognition of the work of nurses in the fight against the pandemic, there are no incentives, risky or painful subsidies, or decent remuneration,” says Ana Rita Cavaco, saying that “we cannot continue to buy ventilators and export nurses” “After eight months of a pandemic with exhausted nurses and many infected, unable to work, it is imperative that the form of hiring nurses, as well as their working conditions, be reviewed,” calls the Order.
