“Extremely serious concerns about the significant staff shortages that do not allow us to reach the minimum established staffing levels, with enormous risks for both patients and operators”.
Thus eighteen medical directors of the hospital Cardarelli of Naples express their protest for the August shifts announced on July 26 by the Hospital which, like many Italian hospitals, often goes into stress in the emergency room and by the Obi. The doctors also highlight in the letter "a quota - it says - of additional hours outside of any normal workload where to date the emoluments for the extra hours of the previous averages have not yet been paid".
Medical managers ask for clarification and correction for the proper functioning of the service. On their side also a letter from the Cgil Funzione Pubblica of Naples that underlines "the complete disarticulation of the chain of command and the contempt for any form of planning and respect for the rules" and recalls that "the problem of summer holidays had already been raised, in a context in which it is a priority to guarantee a minimum staffing for the emergency room shift, considering the additional workload from the covid resurgence".
The Cgil highlights that "the staff, already exhausted by months of overloaded work, is unexpectedly burdened with abnormally large excess hours". "It is clear that the summer period becomes very difficult, plus now we have covid and holidays to guarantee. The number of doctors you can count on in July and August is lower than the number you have during the year, already lower than you would like".
Giuseppe Longo, director of the Cardarelli hospital in NAPLES, says this in response to the doctors' protest over the August hours. Longo recalls that there is a lack of doctors in the emergency room at Cardarelli "as happens in all Italian hospitals", and that today Cardarelli has appointed the commission for the tests for the seven candidates for the permanent contract in the emergency room: "today - he explains - the commission has been formed to do the tests, we will call them shortly for the written, oral and practical tests required by the national contract. If seven of them come we will take them all.
Often, however, fewer people show up than those who participated in the tender. We hope to hire them all to strengthen the doctors”. Longo recalls, however, that beyond the difficult moment, a new national vision is needed on the issue of emergency room doctors, subjected to enormous stress: “it is a problem that grips all Italian emergency rooms. Action is needed from a central and governmental point of view, making the emergency room more active with new contracts that have a financial reward and faster career progression compared to colleagues in other departments.
We will find who can be attracted to the sector knowing that working in the PS can perhaps have fast progressions of professional assignments. The rules of the game must be changed, that is, national contacts. As the contracts are now, I remind everyone that we have done 11 competitions at Cardarelli and that at the last one with a fixed-term contract there were zero participants.
Now we take staff from other departments and send them to do shifts in the emergency room, I realize that the emergency room activity is extremely difficult but as a company we are trying to do everything on the one hand to recruit from outside and on the other we bring other staff from other operating units into the ward, from pneumology to neurology to surgery”.
Article published on 28 July 2022 - 20:17
