Católica Medical School and Hospital de Vila Franca de Xira, EPE, signed a protocol that will allow students from this School to carry out clinical internships in that Hospital.

Also within the scope of this partnership, the involvement of clinicians from the Hospital in research projects will be promoted.

The first students of Católica Medical School should arrive at Hospital de Vila Franca de Xira, EPE, in the third trimester of 2024. Until then the procedures to be implemented for the concretization of the protocol signed between the two institutions are taking place.

"This collaboration will enrich the training that the students of the CMS will have, exposing them to different clinical realities and valuing the teaching staff of the Faculty with highly differentiated doctors of this Hospital" says the director of the Católica Medical School, António de Almeida.

Carlos Andrade Costa, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Hospital de Vila Franca de Xira, EPE, considers that this protocol with the Universidade Católica "encourages even more the HVFX, EPE, to deepen the ambitious project of investment and technological renovation, providing its professionals with state-of-the-art technological conditions for the diagnosis and treatment of their patients. These conditions can only create a very favourable environment for the presence of the students of the Católica Medical School and their tutors, doctors from this Hospital".

The president of the Administration Board of the HVFX, EPE also reinforces "the positive impact of this investment plan in the internship campus of the Medicine students".

The present protocol came into effect upon its signature and will be in force for three-year periods, renewable for equal periods. This way, the Hospital de Vila Franca de Xira, EPE becomes a clinical collaborator of the Católica Medical School, whose partner is Grupo Luz Saúde. This partnership with Grupo Luz includes all the hospitals of the group, including Hospital da Luz Lisboa, which will be the University Hospital of the Católica Medical School.