What is your role at your work?

I am a GP at a primary care public health centre, I see all kind of patients and at all ages.

I participate in the formation of GP doctors and am the current President of the Portuguese Society of Hypertension, in this way being involved with health professionals and community in general to improve awareness about hypertension and cardiovascular events.

How did you get interested in your career path?

Helping others, being able to treat the patient as a whole person in their physical, psychological aspect. As a GP and family doctor knowing the patient’s family and surrounding helps us to treat them better. I started doing teaching sessions for other GP colleagues about hypertensive clinical cases and grew in the hypertension area from there.

What are you most proud of in your career or otherwise?

• Being a mother and being able to dedicate time to my daughter even with all my professional activities.
• Having led my primary care unit to the next level of health quality attendance.
• Being the first GP and woman leader of my national scientific society.
• Having had the opportunity to do some missionary work in low income countries.

What important career challenges have you faced and how did you overcome them?

As a coordinator of the primary care unit I work at, overcoming political measures that impact the way we work and the way we treat our patients. Even though we are very pressured to reduce time per consultation and money investment per patient, I am proud to say that in our working unit we still treat our patients well.

Going through the covid pandemic, I was the coordinator of a covid attending centre and with great team work we managed to push through a very difficult and challenging time.

In the hypertension area, being the current president of the Portuguese Society, I have managed to choose a team, of whom I am very proud. We have worked closely together, done lots of teaching sessions and been very involved in related activities which are having an impact on better blood pressure control in Portugal.

What advice would you give your younger self?

It is important to do what you enjoy and do it well but have a united, collaborating team is very important to reach better results. Taking care of ourself and finding a balance between work and personal life is extremely important.

Highlight your most significant research contributions and publications (3-5) – if relevant to you.

• Having participated in the 2023 ESH Hypertension guidelines.
• Being the executive officer of the ESH GP network and publishing an article about the importance of GPs in hypertension in follow up.

Have you had any significant career mentors? If yes, please provide further details.

Throughout my life, I have had important mentors along the way, some more important than others, but I feel all have had an important role.

In the hypertension field I have had a few, the first mentor that invited me into this activity and along the way I have worked with other colleagues who inspire me. Some younger colleagues inspire me with their positive and dedicated attitude.

How can we support the next generation of women scientists?

In my personal opinion, we don’t need to call attention to our gender, women are genetically capable of doing many activities simultaneously and doing them successfully. Women scientists just need the opportunity and the space to grow and their success will be inevitable. ISH can publicise their work.