The pandemic he delivered the coup de grace, but the situation was already dramatic before. Between medici and nurses of the hospitals tiredness, discouragement, stress, nervousness are growing. One out of two white coats is affected by burnout syndrome, which means psycho-physical exhaustion of strength and loss of lucidity. This also has an inevitable effect on patient care, because a doctor or nurse in crisis inevitably makes more mistakes. According to a study commissioned by Fadoi, there are at least one hundred thousand a year. Let’s go in order: Fadoi is the Federation of Internist Hospital Managers’ Associations, a scientific society which has recently organized the national congress in Milan (it concludes today). He carried out research on a very large sample of white coats.
I STUDY
What emerges is very worrying: «The picture is devastating – they explain to Fadoi -. White coats are depressed, stressed and in perpetual sleep deprivation due to working hours that go far beyond the lawful, impossible to manage. All aggravated by the lack of recognition of the value of what is done with professional competence, a number of patients for doctors and beds that make it almost impossible to establish an empathic relationship with patients and the bureaucracy that makes everything even more difficult. There is this and more in what in technical jargon is defined as “burnout syndrome”, that set of symptoms determined by a state of permanent stress with which 52 percent of doctors and 45 percent of doctors have to live with their work. percent of nurses who work in hospital internal medicine departments. In other words, there are 56,000 doctors and 125,500 nurses who are in the ward while dealing with the syndrome burnout.
But what does this mean from the patient’s point of view? Inevitably, the percentage of medical errors rises. Fadoi cross-referenced the numbers with studies carried out by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, concluding that almost 100,000 medical errors in the ward are caused by this uncomfortable situation of doctors and nurses. And how did we get there? Explains Dario Manfellotto, president of the Fadoi Foundation, of the Internal Medicine Department of the Fatebenefratelli Isola Tiberina Gemelli Hospital in Rome: «Twenty years ago we would not have had this data. There are three variables. The first: the aging of the medical and nursing staff, experienced by many years of profession. Let’s add the three years of Covid, which have been devastating. From an emotional, organizational and personal point of view, that experience had a dramatic effect: he worked without interruption, taking risks, neglecting his families.
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Finally, the healthcare system today is different from that of twenty years ago. Before we had patients with a lower health burden, today you often have patients who need continuous assistance”. Fortunately, the average age of the population has risen, we are older and die later, but it also means having more fragile people who need hospitalization. «Unfortunately – says Manfellotto – having so many personnel in burnout inevitably also affects errors. Fortunately, there is also another fact that emerges: the staff is still motivated. He says: “if you let us do our job, we can give the best assistance possible”. The research shows that 84 percent of white coats believe they positively influence the lives of other people with their work and in 73 percent of cases they feel “cheered up after working with their patients”. It would also be important to free white coats from a heavy burden of bureaucratic procedures”.
Another dark area is the increase in attacks against doctors and nurses, especially those who work in emergency rooms (four episodes every day, according to the latest data), while the role of the general practitioner filter has now weakened. Francesco Dentali, president of Fadoi observes: this situation also puts the health of white coats at risk. He says: «The influence of burnout on occupational diseases is now a fact established by the scientific literature. The risk of myocardial infarction and other adverse coronary events is in fact about two and a half times higher in those who are in burnout, while threats of abortion range from 20 percent when working hours do not exceed 40 hours per week. off to 35 percent when you get to 70. An event that is less and less rare with the chronic undersizing of the organic plants of hospitals ».
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