This time it happened in the hospital Francesco Ferrari from Casarano, in the province of Lecce. A man waiting to undergo a cystoscopy examination in an outpatient clinic of the Urology department, once placed on the examination table, began to lose his temper and then kicked the doctor on duty in the lower abdomen.
And in the corridors of the Policlinico Foggia the attacks continue: in a few days he has been the target of violence from patients and their relatives three times. The last two attacks occurred in less than 24 hours. And the discharges begin in the emergency room, while the Health director tells Tg2: “If resignations become mass, the risk is that we will not be able to guarantee the service for citizens”.
Yesterday afternoon It was the son of a patient who was waiting in the emergency room who hit two nurses and a security guard who intervened to calm him down. The attacker had an arm in a cast that he used to hit the three people.
The night before, instead, an 18-year-old kicked and punched three nurses. The boy’s fury, who arrived at the emergency room due to anxiety, was stopped by the carabinieri who arrested him and took him to prison on charges of assaulting healthcare workers and resisting a public official.
But today there was also the case in Turin where an emergency medicine doctor at the San Giovanni Bosco hospital was attacked outside the complex. The woman, 30 years old, was injured in the hand by a cutting weapon, around 8.
These new episodes follow the attack suffered a few days ago by the health personnel of the same hospital, in the thoracic surgery department, by some relatives of a girl who died during an operation. It had become tragically viral video of the health workers barricaded in a room.
National Federation of Medical Orders: “Reasoning about Army support”
“I believe that today the Government must adopt, with an emergency decree, essential measures” against violence against health workers. Deferred arrest in flagrante delicto is one of the measures that can be adopted immediately. As well as a review of the methods of access to hospitals”. This is what was stated by President of the National Federation of the Orders of Surgeons and Dentists (Fnomceo) Filippo Anelli speaking on the Rai programme Elisir.
“The situation – he added – is degenerating. The issue of violence has become endemic and somehow we will have to protect professionals”, continued the Fnomceo president, who asked “to introduce security measures that prevent operators from being attacked every day: if the police can’t do it, the army is welcome”. Beyond the urgent measures, he concluded, “the time has come to have a strategy that requires not only an increase in resources, but also to restore that authority to the doctor that he seems to have lost in this period”.
Numerous serious incidents in Puglia this summer
A female doctor was attacked before August 15th during a home visit in Minervino of Lecce; a few days after a young medical guard was threatened and pushed by the parents of a child he was visiting in Maruggio. At the end of August at Most Holy Annunciation of Taranto a doctor suffered a head injury after being hit by a relative of a deceased elderly woman. And then the other two cases in the first days of September: at the medical emergency of Erchie a doctor insulted by a patient who demanded a prescription for some drugs. Finally the attack that went viral on the web United Polyclinic of Foggia which we mentioned above.
“A continuous and unstoppable escalation”, denounce the doctors’ unions who have proclaimed a state of agitation and are organizing a united demonstration on Monday 16 September in Foggia to demand answers from employers and institutions.
Pasqualone, health director in Foggia: “If we continue like this we will be left without doctors and nurses”
“If we continue like this, we will end up closing the emergency room because we will be left without doctors, nurses and health workers”. This was stated by the general manager of the Riuniti hospital in Foggia, Giuseppe Pasqualone, during the press conference called after the escalation of violence against health workers with three attacks in a few days. “My appeal – he added – is to respect the staff on duty because they are good and the data at a national level shows it. The Foggia hospital is positioned among the best in Italy. In the emergency room, we work in difficult conditions, we have halved the staff, we are unable to recover doctors and citizens who arrive in non-serious conditions must wait, they must be patient”
In Tuscany, one in two doctors attacked: it’s an emergency
According to the data of the medical association and ANAAO Assomedmore than half of the Tuscan staff have suffered at least one assault during their career. Most of the cases involve women.
Large turnout for trade union demonstration on September 16
The membership is growing Joint demonstration of hospital doctors’ unions planned in Foggia for September 16 against assaults in the ward. “We believe that the demonstration on September 16 is an important first appointment”, says the Italian Doctors’ Union (Smi)announcing its adherence to the joint mobilization launched yesterday by Anaao Assomed e Cimo Fesmed.
“General practitioners, like hospital doctors, are forced to work without any protection, exposed to the mercy of those who feel they have the right to verbally and physically attack professionals committed to responding to health needs”, explains Delia Epifani, regional secretary of the Puglia Smi union, who had already raised the alarm in mid-August, after the attack suffered by her colleague doctor working at the Maruggio Continuity of Care facility, in the Province of Taranto.
“We have long hoped that the trade unions in the area of private and hospital medicine would form a common front. Violence is one of the main reasons why people decide to leave the medical and healthcare profession,” she adds. To highlight the national emergency of a series of attacks, the Smi had proposed last month, in a provocative way, to require gun licenses for healthcare and medical personnel. “We ask – concludes the unionist – that this outrage be put to an end and that we be heard. We believe it is urgent to convene a round table with the doctors’ unions, the Regions, the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Interior in order to adopt proposals to stop violence in hospitals, in continuity of care facilities and in doctors’ offices”.