What if the Ministry of Health was led by a nurse?

Posted on September 8, 2022

Tough question, the title of “Nursing Diagnostics” for the month of September. September is the month of regular renewal of challenges, returning to work after holidays, back to school and, in short, planning a new cycle of developments in active life.

The year 2022, especially with regard to the Ministry of Health, marks a milestone of change with the passing of Minister Marta Temido.

The management of the Ministry of Health is perhaps one of the most complicated matters in Portuguese politics. A health system that expresses a national health service with scarce resources and aims to provide excellent care to Portuguese citizens and a network of private organizations, which in a commercial relationship are an important resource in promoting positive competition and often a resource in response to the lack of SNS.

Health professionals are of the highest quality compared to the rest of the world, but find the difficulties and frustration associated with a financial instrument that did not allow investment in jobs, and therefore in the appreciation of professionals and their association with SNS, answer many times more satisfactory in private organizations.

On the other hand, I would say that since the establishment of SNS, we have experienced some confusion in the meaning of SNS, i.e. in relation to primary health care. The beacon guiding SNS management shines with a more disease-oriented philosophy and, therefore, confers a medical centrality that inevitably values ​​disease, hospitalizations, and indications associated with disease treatment, hospitalization, and surgeries.

However, since Alma-Ata, with its announcement published a year before the birth of the SNS, where investment in primary health care is expected (attention, I reiterate that it is for “primary health” and not for “primary disease”) and in the letter from Ottawa was reiterated , which was published 7 years after the establishment of SNS and with different direction from the management that Health has had for its 43 years of SNS.

Proven pressure groups in health corporate culture, more disease oriented, disinvestment in community-oriented care and in promoting health literacy, consistency of people and multidisciplinary, using evidence (of tremendous quality, even produced in Portugal) for application in the context of clinical and health management.

The evidence, which demonstrates, for a long time, the lack of use of multidisciplinary skills, that is, nurses, as Minister Marta Temido herself explained in her research, and failure to invest in effective access to health care, which will not burden the reduction of disease care (especially emergency services).

Pedro Melo

The statement attributed to Einstein that “insanity always does the same thing and expects different results” would be a good catchphrase for innovation in health department management.

If the Minister of Health is a nurse or a nurse, I am absolutely convinced that he will know how to orient himself better than anyone else to the uncertainty of health in Portugal, and to promote an independent, mature and detailed SNS with a strong health system, with positive competitiveness, which promotes benchmarking And, above all, directed at people, not diseases.

What if the Minister of Health was a nurse or a nurse? It would have been interesting to have a prime minister who could direct innovation.

I still believe that one day we will see the difference. Until then, the nurses and nurses will continue to serve as local ministers promoting the defense of the right to health of every Portuguese citizen, even if they are silenced by all this nurse cover that has covered the history and stories of the Department of Health in Portugal.