Portugal In May

The agenda was a busy one on this fifth trip to Portugal for Eileen and myself. Unusually we were flying into Porto this occasion whereas in the past it had been Lisbon as our first stop. Our trip was to take in Coimbra, Lisbon and finally back to Porto itself for the Friday. On our previous visit we had also visited Braga, which has been described as the ‘Rome of Portugal’ and indeed, the architecture and history of that place were simply stunning.

I still remember with awe the Cathedral we visited where they had kept the history of all its Archbishops back to the time of Christ. As we were going into Porto our Portuguese

representative Joao Paolo Bessa met us at the airport, together with his charming wife Rita. Rita hails from the Brazilian Amazon originally and during one of many meals we were regaled with stories of native South American Indian tribes from close to her home town there. One tribe apparently maintains no contact whatsoever with the outside world. I was wondering whether I might be able to get away with that!

There was relief when we get to Paolo’s car and it was a larger model than the one previously. Great, I thought, we were going to be doing a lot of travelling over the next few days and the touch of comfort would be well appreciated. The weather on arrival was a bit overcast but soon picked up and we had, by and large, radiant sunshine for the entirety of our visit.

Our first presentation was the following day and was to be in Coimbra. This was to start after lunch so there was enough time for Eileen to go to the hairdressers. She has become quite an expert on hairdressers in Portugal and I have suggested she might write the guide…something like ‘A Hairdressing Tour of Europe’ as she ought to have plenty of material. My personal favourite was the one next to the ‘Chez Dany’ restaurant in Porto where she got a very good job done for a mere ten euro! This would be our third visit to Coimbra, which boasts itself a great historical tradition and we visited a square famous for its role during the Inquisition. It is famous as a University town and indeed Paolo informed us later that the populace had the distinction of having a higher life expectancy than anywhere else in Portugal and actually it was possible to understand why. The presentation went well with approximately thirty prospective Irish nurses in attendance. We have found that often the very best attendances in Coimbra coincide with the end of the academic year when the

newly qualified nurses have the examinations behind them and are wondering ‘what do I do with my hard earned qualifications now?’ The good news was that our famed video production on Nursing in Ireland was well received and did a lot of the hard work for us. As usual the Question and Answers session at the end was very interactive and useful.

The following day was to be Lisbon so we had a long drive down to arrive at our hotel at around 7.30 in the evening. The presentations in Coimbra and Porto were
both at hospital lecture theatres whereas in Lisbon we had arranged a room for our presentation in the SAS Radisson Hotel and this arrangement worked very successfully, and we were very pleased with the room and facilities. The audience was similar in size to Coimbra and we were very pleased with this, as this location
had been arranged at really quite short notice. It was also very successful in terms of the quality of the audience, for example we met one particularly experienced Psychiatric Nurse together with another lady in her fifties who had worked in nursing her entire life. We also met a Pharmacist wishing to come to Ireland and a nurse with experience in palliative care who would be very well received by some of our clients back home.
Perhaps as exciting as this, we also met the sister of the very first nurse we had ever placed from Portugal - Laura Santos, her sister informed us that Laura loved the country and fully intended staying there permanently. As chance would have it the sister was also a qualified and registered Interpreter and agreed to help us with official translations for nursing candidates to Ireland. This is very important in speeding-up the application procedure and indeed Laura herself, largely through the help of her sister had achieved registration with the Irish Nursing Board within eight weeks, which stands as the record so far, at least according to our experience with Portuguese applicants.
So for our final ‘gig’ it was back to Porto (via a stop off in Fatima) which is our most established location, and indeed, this would represent our fifth visit to this particular lecture theatre. Attendance was best for the trip so far at around forty, which was nicely manageable. I remember on one occasion there had been over a hundred and ten at this venue when it had become strictly ‘standing room only’. This was more
sedate. For the first time we experienced some technical glitches with our video presentation, but this was eventually sorted out. We met some new candidates and some already involved in the application process. I explained that for our next visit we would be bringing over an employer to ease the application procedure and this was well received.
In general it was pleasing to be able to relay to candidates the success we had found in placing Portuguese candidates. During our previous visit in December most had still been in the application pipeline, but since that time we had been able to successfully place all registered candidates who had come for interview, and long may it continue. The feedback we have got with respect to the work ethic, professionalism, and level of English has been a tremendous indictment of our own
belief in Portugal as a market to source the very best available in Nursing.

Danny Roberts
Best Personnel Ltd.