The project to monitor low-risk pregnancies by specialist nurses will start in health centers on the Setúbal Peninsula, covering pregnant women without a family doctor, the Ministry of Health announced this Wednesday, November 26th.
“The project should start in primary health care units on the Setúbal Peninsula, only for low-risk pregnant women who do not have a family doctor”said the ministry of Ana Paula Martins in a statement.
According to him, the Minister of Health will meet on Thursday, at Hospital Garcia de Orta, in Almada, with nurses specializing in maternal and obstetric health (EESMO) to analyze the surveillance project for low-risk pregnant women in primary care.
The president of the Order of Nurses, Luís Filipe Barreira, and the president of the National Commission for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent’s Health, Alberto Caldas Afonso, will also be present at this meeting.
The order recently presented to the Ministry of Health a proposal for the monitoring and surveillance of low-risk pregnancies, autonomously, by specialist nurses in hospital maternity wards, where around 70% of births are low risk.
The proposal also provides for the possibility of monitoring by EESMO, in primary health care consultations, of pregnant women who do not have a family health team, many of whom remain unsupervised throughout their entire pregnancy.
In 2023, the General Directorate of Health published a standard, which was updated in 2024, which determines the functions of EESMO in hospital healthcare, providing, among other points, that the hospital admission of a pregnant woman in low-risk labor can be carried out by a specialist nurse, with the knowledge of a responsible obstetrics and gynecology doctor, as well as the birth itself.
The OE also intends for action protocols to be regulated for primary health care (health centers), remembering that there has been a community directive on EESMO since 2005, which even allows the prescription of complementary diagnostic means, such as analyzes and ultrasounds, but which has never been transposed to Portugal.
At the end of September, in a parliamentary hearing, the Minister of Health expressed her willingness to evaluate the proposal for monitoring low-risk pregnant women who do not have a family doctor by specialist nurses, claiming that they cannot be left unsupervised during pregnancy.