Doctors are practicing “catastrophe medicine” in several units where the volume of patients is excessive in the last week of the year, the National Federation of Doctors (Fnam) defended today.
“The closure and conditioning of almost half of the Emergency Services (ED) from north to south of the country was something that became trivial in this Ministry of Health led by Manuel Pizarro, which did not have the competence to attract and retain doctors in the National Service of Health, in a year in which the number of retired doctors reached a peak of 822”, stated the union structure, in a statement.
According to Fnam, doctors are overworked and “without adequate conditions to carry out their duties”.
“Insufficiencies multiplied during Christmas, and the worst is feared for the last days of the year, where the periods after the celebrations are traditionally more demanding for the US”, warned the Federation, highlighting “situations that usually operate below minimum conditions” and that put doctors and patients at risk, such as the ED at Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Santo António, in Porto.
According to Fnam's report, internal doctors “have been forced” to fill the shortage of specialists and for days now there has been “a single internal doctor providing external urgency for Internal Medicine, and at the same time at least 140 hospitalized patients in charge of this specialty, without specialist doctor on the internal emergency scale”, a situation that is expected to continue from January.
“Furthermore, doctors have been victims of illegal deregulation of their schedules, with six days of work per week, without being granted compensatory rest after carrying out work on Sundays and public holidays”, assured the same source, highlighting that even The payment of additional work for inmates has yet to be regularized.
Fnam also said that at Leiria Hospital, the situation became particularly serious, with services dependent on just two specialist doctors and two general training interns, who “do not have the necessary experience to, with the necessary safety for patients, practice medical acts autonomously”.
“During the night of Christmas Eve, the entire hospital was handed over to one specialist, two generalists and two 1st and 2nd year interns. All other emergency specialties were closed: Cardiology, Gynecology, Surgery, Pediatrics. Internal Medicine has been closed since the night of the 24th and, even so, emergencies have not stopped arriving by their own means and patients by ambulances without contact with CODU [Urgent Patient Guidance Center], increasing the medico-legal risk for doctors and patient safety”, claimed Fnam.
“In the South, in the Algarve, there are some SUs alternating between hospitals Faro and Portimão, without the capacity to ensure simultaneous operation. This is the case of Pediatrics, Gynecology-Obstetrics, Gastroenterology and, more recently, Urology”, highlighted the representative structure of doctors.
In the same document, Fnam also informed that it provides doctors with a declaration of decline of functional responsibility, with the aim of “rejecting any and all responsibility arising from the practice of medical acts”, whenever they are faced with conditions that are unsuitable for the exercise of their functions and challenged the next Government for negotiations.
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