Family doctors: “In the trenches every day, not Cardarelli. For us 200 daily visits are normal”
“Forget about the emergency room: in family doctors’ offices 200 requests for assistance per day are the norm. For more than two years now we have been living our daily Cardarelli, but without funds and in absolute solitude”.
In the aftermath of the latest overcrowding crisis in the emergency room of Naples' main hospital, Cardarelli, Luigi Sparano and Corrado Calamaro, family doctors at Fimmg, are raising the alarm about the conditions of local medicine.
“The images of Cardarelli – explains Calamaro – they hurt the heart, but it hurts even more to know what you don't see in the newspapers or on television. I'm talking about the difficulties that hundreds of general practitioners have to live every day in trying to respond to the thousands of calls, requests for bureaucratic procedures and visits that come from the territory.
Those who attack family medicine should reflect on the fact that 200 emergency room visits cause a hospital like Cardarelli to go haywire, while for us family doctors 200 requests for assistance are the daily norm”.
“Technologies and hospital facilities are funded – Sparano complains – creating a healthcare short circuit that is clear for all to see. For every 100 family doctors, only 15% of nurses are funded in our country, and only 60% of general practitioners have the opportunity to avail themselves of a practice collaborator”.
"To date – conclude Sparano and Calamaro – family medicine has become the scapegoat for a health management that is increasingly accountant-like and less and less calibrated to real healthcare needs. Beyond proclamations and rhetoric, very little or almost nothing has been done. If general practitioners were put in a position to do their job to the best of their ability, scenes like those at Cardarelli would not even exist”.
Article published on May 11, 2022 - 11:38 pm
