Medical students warn of failures in the choice of vacancies

Omedical students today warned of failures in the platform of choice of places of medical boarding, after candidates report early access to information that, according to the Central Administration of the Health System, resulted from a technical simulation.

The president of the National Association of Medicine Students (ANEM), Maria Fontão, told Lusa that the association has not yet been able to obtain “exact information about what technical or human error may have occurred”.

“ We still cannot understand very well the extent of the problem, beyond the period of time during which it occurred. But what happened, especially yesterday [Tuesday], was that, allegedly, there was access to certain preferences or certain vacancies that would be available or not, and the ordering process ends only today”, said.

The president of ANEM explained that the deadline for candidates to submit or change their preferences lists ends at 23:59 today.

Contacted by Lusa, the Central Health System Administration (ACSS) explained that a simulation was carried out at the end of Tuesday afternoon in the context of the verification, validation and resilience procedures of the placement system in specialized training, with the results of this simulation being temporarily visible on the platform.

“ However, the information available does not correspond to the official results and does not have any effect on the placement procedure, nor does it translate an effective allocation of vacancies to the candidates, whose integrity remains assured ", ensures the ACSS.

According to ACSS, the simulation was performed by SPMS – Shared Services of the Ministry of Health, entity responsible for the technological management of the application platform.

The ACSS recalls that the results of the first batch will only be known on Thursday, at 10:03 p.m., after the execution of the slot allocation algorithm, based on the preferences ordered by the candidates within the set deadline.

In the statements to Lusa, the president of the association said that “this information was not supposed to be disclosed”, considering that the “technical or human failure” will eventually have repercussions “in the trust of the system”, which, she said, “was already very fragile, even before this process of initiating”.

ANEM claims to have received reports from candidates as well as videos and photographs that allegedly document the event. “It’s all candidate information and we’re trying to guide our action through the information we have from these reports,” he said.

The amendment of the model deserved criticism from the Order of Doctors and ANEM, also leading to the creation of a public petition, which, at 1:00 p.m. today, had 6,418 subscribers asking for transparency, equity and justice in the process of choosing vacancies.

The association had previously warned that the new system, rather than face-to-face, became online and with candidates organized by groups to have to indicate their preferences beforehand.

Depending on the number of candidates in each group, it may be necessary to order tens or even hundreds of vacancies, explained ANEM, for whom this change can lead to the inclusion of vacancies “without an effective preference”, only to ensure a placement, “increasing the risk of subsequent terminations”.

The Association recognises the advantages of digitising the process, namely the possibility for applicants to make the choice from any location and have more time to organize their preferences, but warns that changes may have “relevant consequences” for candidates and the National Health Service (SNS).