Portugal’s nurses sound alert: 20,000 more are needed

Nurses have sounded the alert. They say the profession needs another 20,000 vacancies to be opened. As municipalities in the Algarve call for nurses’ leave to take holidays this summer ‘to be cancelled’, the Syndicate of Portuguese nurses has held a protest outside parliament to suggest this is not the solution. Hiring new intake, insists the syndicate, is the only way.