The Gregorian calendar that we use, based on the solar calendar, dictates our succession of hours, days and months. In December there is a stocktaking of the past months, and we celebrate the beginning of a new year. In January one makes plans and considers the future, expressed in the popular saying: New Year, New Life!

However, this symbolic desire to start out again is only this: a desire. The international and Portuguese economic panorama is still difficult. Prospects for this year are complicated, and the Portuguese economic context, with a very low economic growth rate and an increasing percentage of unemployed people, is not bright. At the beginning of this year unemployment is about 10% of the active population.

At a time when the state budget has been delivered to the Portuguese Republican Assembly, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education – MCTES, one of the few which have had an increased budget in relation to the previous year, about 17%, has recently signed a Trust Contract with the higher education institutions, which will allow a stabilizing of their management until 2013, despite in nominal terms the University of Lisbon only receiving a sum similar to what it received five years ago. What is taking place at the moment within the university is the plan to be presented to the MCTES showing the contributions made by each faculty and institute and indicating the aims to be achieved by 2013.

Despite the Faculty of Medicine continuing to present a balanced situation within the overall situation of the University of Lisbon, it is also impossible to ignore the constraints and difficulties. The Action Plan presented by the Dean of the Faculty, Professor Fernandes e Fernandes, for the 2010-2012 period, approved by the Faculty Assembly on the 14th of January, defines a clear strategy for that period, and points towards the need for the budget to continue to demand a policy of great rigour and contention. This document led to the preparation of the Faculty of Medicine’s proposal to be presented and debated on the level of Lisbon University, bearing in mind the commitments to be taken on within the scope of the contract with the MCTES until 2013.

The future of the Faculty of Medicine in 2010 – which is already present – in relation to this atmosphere of difficulties that the country is undergoing demands responsible and active attitudes and positions in relation to the problems facing us. In this sense, without prejudice to the pursuing of the policy of rigour and contention, the faculty of Medicine is pointing towards the future and is based on three guiding lines for its action:

i) in strategic terms, alongside the role it plays within the University of Lisbon, it is fundamental to carry on with the process of constituting the forming of the Lisbon Centre of Academic Medicine, not only because of the links that may be generated among the three institutions that form it – the Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Molecular Medicine of the University of Lisbon and the Santa Maria Hospital (North Lisbon Hospital Centre, EPE) – but also because of what this project may mean in terms of the organisation of medical teaching and of research in the area of health sciences;
ii) in organisational terms the challenge will be to carry on not only with the improving of organisational capacities, but also to continue to valorise the existing human capital;
iii) in budgetary terms the challenge will increasingly be to continue to maintain the current performance levels, but with the same resources.

We have a difficult year ahead of us, but the fact is that it is at moments like these that the opportunities appear that lead institutions to become more competent, efficient and efficacious.

The Faculty of Medicine possesses a stable financial situation and a high standard of human capital, so that if it can count on all those who embody the institution – including students, teachers and the support staff – it has everything possible to remain on the track set out and to overcome the obstacles that appear in its path.
Dr. Luis Pereira
FMUL Coordinating Secretary
secretario@fm.ul.pt