'Coaching' in the NHS: a tool has no proper name

Portugal's National Health Service (SNS) will spend 900 thousand euros on a "coaching" service for health professionals, specifically for family doctors, without using the designation of "listening" to describe the service. The contract was made through a public tender launched by the Unidade de Missão para os Cuidados Prazos, the organization responsible for managing the recovery program for lists of patients without an assigned doctor. The total value planned for this contract is 900 thousand euros, intended to provide support to clinicians facing high levels of pressure and work overload. The article questions the use of the term "coaching" instead of "listening" to describe what appears to essentially be a psychological listening or emotional support service. The central criticism of the article is that it is an instrument without a proper name, where the SNS pays for a service that essentially consists of listening to professionals, but avoids using that word. The program is part of the broader context of recovering lists of patients without a family doctor, a chronic problem of the SNS that has led to the overload of existing professionals. The hiring of "coaching" comes as a support measure for doctors who end up working with expanded lists of patients, in a context of scarcity of clinicians in the Portuguese public health system.