New nurses, not just those who come to replace those who will leave for other health units, and the provision of more inpatient beds. The Hospital and University Center of the Algarve was under fire, after a complaint made by nurses about the difficulty of the Emergency Service in responding to requests, but Ana Paula Gonçalves, chairman of the Board of Directors of CHUA, guarantees that hospitals in the Algarve have been preparing to respond to the expected increase in users, with the peak of the flu outbreak.
O Sul Informação he spoke with the head of the team that manages the Algarve's hospitals, who revealed that weeks ago the CHUA launched a procedure for recruiting new nurses, which "only waits for authorization from the guardianship". In this “lead”, said the president of the Board of Directors of the Algarve hospitals, “42 new nurses will be hired to fill the gaps”.
However, CHUA has already asked the Government for "authorization to hire another 54 nurses, to replace those who will move to primary health units", in the follow-up of the competition that was launched nationally. In other words, "96 new nurses" will be hired in total, who are expected to enter the service "by the end of January, beginning of February".
The chairman of the CA of CHUA guarantees that “recruitment is already being done. Our newspaper confirmed with the Union of Portuguese Nurses, which had already warned of the need to hire more health professionals for hospitals, to deal with the flu outbreak, that nurses are being contacted by hospitals in the Algarve, in order to sign contracts and enter the service in the coming days.
Ana Paula Gonçalves once again denied that there were people "starving, under stairwells and dying" in the emergency room, due to lack of care and staff, as was made public in a statement allegedly issued by the hospital's emergency room nurses team in Faro.
“We are in the execution phase of a contingency plan against the flu. We had to increase our inpatient capacity and one of the places we used was that room», where the complaint that was made via email to some newspapers and on social networks he says that 80 users were gathered, despite having a maximum capacity of 24.
Ana Paula Gonçalves does not confirm that these numbers have been reached, but admits that, at certain times, "there is an abnormal influx of patients", which can lead to "momentarily, there are interned people there, with others, while decide what is going to be done».
What is certain is that «there was a peak of affluence between Christmas and New Year», in which hospital emergency services received, on average, «more than a thousand users per day», but that these numbers dropped to « around 700 a day” at the beginning of the year, settling “at 800 in the last days”.
This Monday, as our newspaper was able to verify, despite seeing a considerable number of patients on a stretcher in the clinical decision room, there were no stretchers piled up in the corridors and calm reigned. But everything could change soon, as affluence is expected to increase again, bearing in mind that the peak of the flu outbreak is only expected to be reached "next week".
This predictable increase in affluence is being taken care of, said Ana Paula Gonçalves, namely with the preparation of a wing of the Center for Rehabilitation and Physical Medicine of the South – which with the creation of CHUA became supervised by its Board of Directors -, « which will be temporarily, and very soon, used as a space to receive these patients' and take pressure off the emergency room. Faro.
According to the Regional Health Administration (ARS) of the Algarve, 27 new inpatient beds will be opened in that health unit located in São Brás de Alportel, which will join «the 22 already activated in the health units. Faro and Portimão» of CHUA.
The same entity announced that «it is planned during the month of January the expansion and conversion of another 20 beds of Continuous Care in the Algarve region in the Convalescent and Medium and Long-term typologies, with ten beds being activated in Portimão and ten more at Azinhal (Castro Marim), which will allow for the expansion of RNCCI's assistance capacity and at the same time strengthen the responses at the inpatient level, thus alleviating the pressure on the Algarve's hospital services».
See how were the emergencies of Faro on Monday:
Photos: Hugo Rodrigues|Sul Informação
And remember the images associated with the nurses' complaint:
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