Ioanna Kardara
▸Abolition of the daily operation of hospitals, sanitary strike on October 17
The hospital doctors express their strong reaction to the new on-call regime promoted by the government, as it indirectly seeks to implement a 24-hour daily on-call plan in the hospitals of Attica.
As Olga Kosmopoulou, a doctor and member of the Board of Directors of the Nice Hospital Employees’ Union and EINAP, explains in Before, through the vigilance regime that the Ministry of Health wants to impose “the daily operation of the hospital is abolished in terms of both diagnosis and treatment and the provision exams and regular clinics”. According to Olga Kosmopoulou, another negative is the lack of staff, as it is not enough, and with the new system, it will be called upon to exaggerate itself and destroy itself.
“The work is intensifying terribly. It is obvious that the government is trying to solve its communication problem and is not interested in solving the problem on the ground. Without recruiting, without giving incentives for doctors to come to the NHS, because in some specialties such as pathology, doctors no longer come to even be trained in it or to be assigned to the hospital as they know that the conditions will be extremely intensive, he calls those already exterminated to be exterminated more”, he says characteristically.
For months now, the Ministry of Health has been working on the new plan for on-call services, trying to raise the issue of daily 24-hour on-call services in the hospitals of Attica. However, hospital doctors initially objected to this change. That’s why the ministry came back this month, stressing that what they’re currently looking at are “simulation plans to see how they could reduce waiting times in emergency rooms.”
“Essentially, with the exact same staff, with the exact same building infrastructure, with the same beds and without essential primary care, they are trying to do a communication trick and win at the points of information. Let them say that we opened the hospitals and everything is now fine. They do not know the premises of the hospitals and their operation at all. So they cannot realize that an important reason for waiting in the EDs is that there are not enough paramedics and nurses or that the labs are too late for various technical reasons. So it is fatal that the wait is so long with these conditions, with these data. And of course they completely ignore the fact that there are not enough hospital beds to serve the population.
Adonis Georgiadis forgets that he had closed hospital beds in his previous term of office. And that these beds are necessary, because the number of people coming to the emergency rooms of hospitals has also increased”, notes Olga Kosmopoulou and adds that through the new plan they will effectively abolish hospitals as functional units of care that they are now, transforming the whole the medical and nursing operation in on-call and emergency operations.
“The allocation of on-call hospitals as it is today is clearly not efficient. We need many more hospitals. But there are things that are done on a regular basis that should continue to be done. The patient admitted to the hospital does not fall into a black hole. He has diagnostic tests, a functioning medical and nursing team that sees him on a daily basis, that treats him, that diagnoses him. We have difficult diagnostic cases. This cannot be done if you have to empty the beds quickly to be on duty again”, he points out and emphasizes that in this way patients with chronic or serious problems will be recycled from ward to ward.
“All these people who will not be able to solve their problem in the public hospital will inevitably go to the private sector,” he notes and adds that the health workers are determined to escalate their mobilizations with a landmark health strike on October 17. In fact, on Wednesday 25/9 there were work stoppages and staff gatherings, with the decisions of the unions, at the “Attikon”, Nikaia, “Asklipieiou” Voulas, “Triassiou”, PSNA Dafni, Evangelismos and Children’s Pentelis hospitals. “An ultimatum has been given that we are not going to implement it,” he concludes.
Published in the newspaper Before (28.09.24)
2024-10-08 08:00:09