Nova Medical School

This is its DNA: a Medical School with a relaxed but demanding academic environment that trains doctors and nutritionists, but above all seeks to train complete citizens.

NMS is an academic unit of Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and it currently has 1.770 students in the Integrated Master Degree in Medicine, 102 in the Bachelor's Degree in Nutrition, and 497 postgraduate students. It has a total of 858 professors and researchers.

The strategy of gradual integration of foreign teachers and researchers, combined with the number of international postgraduate students (12%) and mobility students (12%) reveals not only the opening of the Faculty abroad but also the international projection it has been acquiring and which it intends to strengthen in the future.

In 2022 NMS reached, for the seventh consecutive year, the 1st position in the ranking of admissions to Higher Education, in Medicine, in the Lisbon Area

The Nutrition Sciences course at NMS, largely shared with the teaching of Medicine, is a strong bet from an integrative point of view where it is possible to train for the acquisition of “hands-on research skills”, which allows the student to understand associations and recommendations and ensure more holistic and effective diagnoses and intervention strategies.

It is the Medical School with the best teacher/student ratio in the clinical years in Portugal and its students have had excellent results in the exam of access to specialty.

NMS is associated with several health units, allowing a variety of teaching environments and more extended knowledge of hospital reality and primary health care.

Furthermore, the University Medical Centre of Lisbon (Centro Médico Universitário de Lisboa - CMUL), which is a Consortium between NMS and Central Lisbon Hospital Centre (Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Central - CHLC), grants the students of NMS a better and more integrated clinical training.

The privileged relationship that NMS maintain, in terms of clinical teaching, with the University Hospital Center of Lisbon Central, which will be located in the future East Lisbon Hospital (Hospital de Lisboa Oriental), led to the creation of the CMUL – Lisbon University Medical Center, which was recently expanded to other hospital units: Western Lisbon Hospital Center (Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Ocidental )and Lisbon Psychiatric Hospital Centre (Hospitalar Psiquiátrico de Lisboa), Primary Health Care in the areas of these Hospital Centers and the NOVA National School of Public Health (Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública da NOVA).

With this expansion, it was renamed CCAL – Academic Clinical Center of Lisbon, a structure that allows for better and more integrated clinical education to the School’s students, providing better conditions for continuous training for professionals and fostering a scientific approach in care practice. The Hospital de Lisboa Oriental will be the first Portuguese experience, created from scratch and from the beginning of a new hospital unit, which will have the triple mission of: 1) Treat/cure patients; 2) Teach/train students and train health professionals; 3) Investigate/discover disease mechanisms and their resolution.

The facilities of the Research Pole, in addition to the improvement of educational activities (Library and MedSim), allowed the creation of excellent spaces for research, where more than 40 groups dedicated to various areas of study develop collaborative and excellent work. The Nova Medical Research comprises 3 research units: TOXOMICS (Centre for Toxicogenomics and Human Health), CHRC (Comprehensive Health Research Centre) and iNOVA4Health – Advancing Precision Medicine, a program in translational medicine.

NMS also participates in the R&D Unit: Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS).

The Clinical Skills Training Centre (NOVA MedSim) and the Food Research Laboratory (LIA) are the most recent teaching support, both equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for both pre- and post-graduate training and education. of the investigation.

Ahed – Advanced Health Education, of which NOVA Medical School is a founding partner, was launched in 2019. It offers a wide variety of postgraduate programs dedicated to all health professionals, with a large practical component and recourse to simulation and practical cases, coordinated by a faculty with extensive professional experience.

Mission and objectives

NOVA Medical School was established by law decree 481/77, issued November 15, 1977. It began its activities in the 1977/1978 academic year.

The school is one of the institutions of NOVA University of Lisbon. Its responsibilities are described in article 2 of the defining statutes and policies of the school, published in law 8664/2009 annex, issued March 18, 2009 (Code of the Portuguese Republic, 2nd series, number 60, March 26, 2009):

• The school's mission is the public service of preparing excellent professionals in the areas of medical sciences and other health fields.
• So that the school can accomplish this mission it pursues the following objectives:
  • Internationally competitive research in multidisciplinary areas, including research aimed at solving society's health problems;
  • Teaching excellence, increasingly focusing on the second (master) and third (doctorate) cycles, offering academic programs competitive nationally and internationally.
  • Establishing a widening network of synergetic health field collaborations with other institutions at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and beyond;
  • Providing high-quality services leading to the effective improvement of health care delivery and its human resources, nationally and internationally, namely in Portuguese-speaking countries.