Doctors are resigning due to stressful working conditions. Patients forgo treatment, discouraged by waiting time for examination. And whoever ends up in the emergency room must make the sign of the cross, hoping not to fall into the hands of a doctor who has been on duty for 48 hours straight. Post-pandemic health care is sick and tired and has a thousand knots to untie. Now that the Covid emergency is over, it is not inconceivable that the problems will go back to what they always were.
Escape from first aid
Eight doctors leave public hospitals daily: 9,000 letters of resignation submitted between 2019 and 2021 and the wave continues, especially in the emergency room. How is that? Low pay compared to the workload, double shifts and skipped vacations so as not to leave “gaps”. And so more and more competitions banned by health companies and hospitals became deserted, as happened a few months ago in the emergency room of the Cardarelli Hospital in Naples. Frontline work has lost its appeal. A partial response will come from the collective agreement that will close next week and which provides for average increases of 175 euros per month for 600,000 employees, equivalent to a revaluation rate of 7.22%.
Doubtful Doctors
In order not to leave the first aid service unguarded, the hospitals use the Distinguished Doctors, an army of 15,000 white coats, small and large, run by cooperatives. They take a higher amount than an intern or a doctor at the beginning of their career: up to a thousand euros per shift, and 3,600 for a 48-hour service. Outsourcing the service has been declared illegal since 2018 in order not to create the double path of overpaid but inexperienced doctors and send them from time to time to unknown hospitals and more skilled but humiliating doctors with very low salaries. With the pandemic, the coin-operated doctors are back and never cannibalized again. So much so that, according to the Simeu (Society of Emergency and Emergency Medicine) report, they often account for half of the staff.
Doctors are missing
About 4,000 doctors are missing. It also lacks hospital beds, as well as 118 heterogeneously organized systems throughout the national territory. To get around these critical points, emergency legislation is needed: For this reason, Fiasu, the Federation of Hospitals, is proposing an exceptional measure, which remains in effect for 24-36 months, which would allow both medical and surgical graduates to be employed in the emergency room. To practice the profession, trainees in the self-employed system during the training course.
who have regained care
The new Istat report shows that in 2021, 11% of people (about 6 million people) had to give up needed specialist visits or diagnostic tests due to economic problems or difficulties accessing the service (in 2019 it was 6.3%). Public system queues discourage blocking.
medicine at home
Fimmg doctors are demanding to restore proximity and strengthen the “base” of medicine with pediatricians and outpatient specialists. A promising speech from the new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who also decided to focus on regional facilities and home care, as well as use the pharmacy network for many services: “We need to bring health care back to the regions, strengthen the role of general practitioners and involve the pharmacy system because they are among the first managers in the region ».
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