The Algarve's hospitals are prepared for people "who need to receive" and to adapt to the changes that may be on the horizon, in the event of a substantial increase in Covid-19 in the region, he assured the Sul Informação Ana Castro, the new chairman of the Board of Directors of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve.
In her first major interview after taking responsibility for the management of public hospitals in the Algarve in July, the oncologist also spoke openly with the Sul Informação, without refusing to answer even the most difficult questions.
One of the themes of this great interview, which our newspaper will report in different articles over the next few days, was the response that is being prepared to face the second wave of Covid-19.
And this goes, of course, through the availability of new spaces and the increase in the number of beds for those infected with the new coronavirus.
«We are currently operating in Portimão with 22 beds. In Faro, in this second phase, we have 60 beds with the possibility of internment in the Covid ward», said the president of the CA of CHUA.
In the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where «at the moment we have about 12 inpatients», expansion is being given to the next phase, «where there will be around 30 beds here in Faro and 12 beds in Portimão».
«The maximum capacity of intensives is 51 beds in the entire hospital center and already at a stage where we have to stop activity. Because we will always have to have intensive care beds for non-Covid patients. The rest of life continues to happen. Although, with these restrictions and with people staying at home and everything else, there are also fewer accidents and fewer people who may be in need of intensive care, this will always happen», explained Ana Castro.
This ability was reinforced with the arrival of new fans in recent months, but also with the preparation of teams.
“The reinforcement of fans helped. We carried out works and created new intensive care units, both here and in Portimão. But there are things that we cannot overcome, which is the lack of professionals».
«We went to the market, as everyone else went to the market, and there are no specialists in this area. So, what we did was to prepare our people, count on our doctors and take advantage of those who are more interested in intensive care and who can work in these teams», said the new head of the Algarve hospitals.
In other words, CHUA has been focusing on «mixed teams, with professionals who are specialists in intensive care medicine and others who are not specialists, but who have specific training for this».
With the nurses, the hospitals in the Algarve went “to get all that were available for us to hire”.
«Right now, and since we started, I can say that we went to the market to hire around 103 nurses, 60 assistants and 40 technicians», revealed Ana Castro.
“We have to go get all the professionals who are available. We have also been looking for doctors who came to work with us, from various specialties, and therefore, at this moment, we think that we are training the hospital to be able to respond», concluded the president of the Board of Directors of CHUA.
Getting here took a lot of planning. In fact, this is a task that has occupied the new CA's days since day one.
“It has been a period of reorganization. First, we tried to get to know the house and then we tried to organize what we found, to optimize things. Basically, it has been a bit of reorganization in the middle of a complex height, which is Covid-19's», said Ana Castro.
One of the priorities was “to resume all the consultations that were on hold, to try to ensure that care was provided to people and that they continued to receive medical care”.
All of this was done thinking about a possible worsening of the epidemiological situation in the region, with the arrival of the colder months.
“We prepared for this 2nd phase from the moment we arrived, reorganizing services, trying not to stop, trying to recover activity, to try to compensate for the care that was not provided during that time”, he added.
This preparatory work culminated in the trigger from Phase 2 of CHUA's Covid Contingency Plan, on the 10th of November, which was designed to ensure that «this second wave has the least possible impact on the normal activity of CHUA», although this is inevitable.
“In this second phase, we think we are better prepared to be able to continue to answer some things, but, probably and of course, we won't be able to answer all of them. There are some situations that we won't be able to keep. But we will try as much as possible to maintain the activity of the hospital and outpatient surgery, outpatient consultations, whether by tele-consultation or video-consultation, trying to guide patients in this way», guaranteed Ana Castro.
Photos: Nuno Costa | Sul Informação
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