Jorge and his wife, Ermitas, came from Pontevedra to the Clinic for a consultation that was cancelled. Sandra Alonso
The third day of the doctors’ strike maintains a follow-up similar to that of the previous ones; fifteen thousand appointments and more than seven hundred surgeries have been postponed since the start
14 abr 2023 . Updated at 05:00 h.
Ermitas Tenorio asked for the day off work so she could accompany her husband, Jorge, to an oncology consultation at the CHUS. An ambulance picked them up at half past nine in Pontevedra and at one in the afternoon they waited patiently in Santiago for it to take them back. The appointment was canceled due to the strike. They are the collateral damage of a medical par convened by CESM and that since Tuesday —not including the activity suspended yesterday afternoon— sum 726 canceled surgeries, 15,469 consultations and 1,278 tests. Jorge is waiting for them to tell him if he resumes regular treatment or replaces it with some pills, we’ve been wasting the whole day, I asked for the day for nothing, they could have told us at least this morning not to come, there are people who came by taxi from Pontevedra, explains Hermitages. They understand the strike and of course they will have a workload, but there are people who work longer hours, they regret it.
Jorge is part of those 15,000 patients who have had a consultation cancelled. Matas’s parents have two cancellations this week: not taking the child to daycare and asking for hours at work for nothing.
María Gómez and her father could not do an X-ray because of the strike Sandra Alonso
In the case of 14-year-old María Gómez, she went to the Clinic to have her cast removed because she sprained her wrist a few weeks ago, they took it off but did not do an X-ray because the specialists were on strike, says her father, What I don’t think is right is that they let people get to the hospital to apply pressure, they lose days of work, the school agenda…
At least in their case they won’t have to come back, the traumatologist explained to them that as the injury was, in principle it was no longer necessary to do an X-ray, so they won’t have to come back another day.
From left to right, Ángel Prieto, Gabriel Martínez, María Pazo, Rafael Mejuto and Ramón Serramito, all CHUS doctors Sandra Alonso
If they force us, we will leave
On the other side are the doctors who have decided to mobilize. Eventual, residents, interim, with a fixed position, section heads… Each one has their reasons although many are coincidental. Rafael Mejuto is 33 years old and is a specialist in the digestive system at CHUS. He had contracts of six, three, two and even one month, but I decided not to sign this last one, now they have made me one for one year. He asks for decent contracts and that the law be followed. There is no question of leaving for family reasons but if they force us, we will leave. In front of the Clinic, dozens of physicians summoned by CESM gathered, some with a lot of experience such as Ángel Prieto, head of the neurosurgery section: There is a lot of precariousness among the young, the resident doctor who finished last year is hired for only five guards a month. All the demands are justified, she insists, the guards are not paid correctly and for an afternoon of work they give me 200 euros in the public and if I do it in the private Sergas pays two thousand.
Ramón Serramito, a neurosurgeon, adds the price of the hour on call, quite scarce, and which is one of the main demands of this strike, to extend the specific complement to doctors who also do private healthcare, we have the same hours and we are withdraw a part of the salary that is about 700 or 800 euros a month, it is unfair.
45 contracts minimum
Gabriel Martínez is an ENT specialist at the Clínico and recently obtained a permanent position. Until then, he had at least 45 contracts. Young doctors, he says, are very overburdened: at 55 years old, they stop doing shifts and young people are fed up, the work days are unbearable.
He third day of strike had an incidence similar to that of other conferences, with more than 15% follow-up according to the Xunta, with health areas where almost one in four professionals has decided to stop, such as Vigo (23.53%), and others where this figure drops to 10.14% (Pontevedra and Salns). The CESM ensures that follow-up is around 62% and claims, among other issues, agendas limited to 25 patients for pediatricians and 30 for family medicine in primary care, and a 35-hour weekly shift.
Residents will be able to access the professional career
This Friday those responsible for the Minister of Health meet with the unions with representation in the sector table to address improvements in the working conditions of Sergas professionals. One of them will be to extend to all Mirí staff the negotiation of salary increases, which in the agreement of March 31 prioritized primary education, or to study that they can access a professional career, so that they do not have to wait five years after leaving. finish this training to apply for grade one.
The strike already leaves 2,600 people without the medical attention they had scheduled in Vigo
Angel Paniagua
The Galician doctors strike It continues to disrupt the lives of many people. He does it, above all, in the Vigo area, where the impact is greater than anywhere else in the community. In these first two days of unemployment, 2.589 personas who should have received non-urgent health care were left without it in hospitals, according to official data from Sergas. There have been 11,200 throughout Galicia, so in Vigo there are one in four patients directly affected by the strike. The impact on operations, queries, and tests has been similar on both days.
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