In the waiting room of the emergency room now there isn’t even a free place to sit and wait, for hours at best. The exhausted doctors and nurses run from one patient to another, trying to answer everyone, calmly, even if nervousness is skyrocketing and conversation with anxious relatives often transcends the limits. The arrival of the flu this year is putting pressure on hospitals, which are already suffering from a lack of doctors.
THE REPORTS
Fabio De Iaco, president of the Italian Society of Emergency and Urgent Medicine (Simeu) tries to put together the reports coming from all regions: “The accesses have intensified by about 50% compared to what we saw in September”. And he adds: «The difficulties can only get worse in the coming weeks. We expect the peak during the holidays, when we will have more elderly patients but also more sick colleagues and therefore the need to cover more shifts with the same staff, which is already very scarce. There are Covid patients and then those with the flu also arrive. Many logins are inappropriate; we often find ourselves caring for patients with symptoms that can be managed at home.”
But in an already precarious situation, every additional patient, even if he is later discharged, creates chain problems on the whole system. «By increasing the volume of work – explains De Iaco – the expectations for all patients increase, and overcrowding in hospitals increases. We speak in the vast majority of frail and elderly or immunosuppressed patients who need to be hospitalized. At that point the problem is that the hospital is no longer sufficient. There are no beds for everyone.” Doctors repeat it now until exhaustion: «Hospitalization places are also needed in the area that allow chronicity to be managed – the president of Simeu reiterates – At the moment there are no tools to assist those acutely chronic patients who therefore have no alternative to the hospital. For example, I am referring to an elderly person who only needs a drip and an antibiotic every day because he has pneumonia: he is hospitalized when instead a care facility with a bed, a nurse and a doctor would be enough. Unfortunately, by now the emergency room is the only entrance door to the hospital, given that in this period with overcrowding they have substantially blocked hospitalizations scheduled at a national level”. On the territory, in reality, there are doctors from General medicine. But you don’t always get an immediate answer.
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THE CRITIC
“It’s not true that they don’t respond to patients, this criticism is demeaning – remarked Filippo Anelli, president of the National Federation of Orders of Surgeons and Dentists (Fnomceo) – Let’s not forget that often the pressure on emergency rooms is multiplied for 10 thousand on general medicine studies. About the Covid, there are 20 million citizens who have turned to the family doctor, and only less than a million to hospitals. It may happen that the doctor does not respond because he is examining ».
Yet many, impatient, eventually turn to the emergency room. “The flu is a viral disease and we don’t have any real therapies – explains Anelli – The fever lasts from 3 to 7 days and reaches up to 40 degrees”. To keep the symptoms at bay, medications are now known. «Just use antipyretics or anti-inflammatories, but not antibiotics because they are useless – recommends the president of Fnomceo – Then it is necessary to drink a lot and also take mineral salts. But let’s not forget that staying warm is the best therapy for the flu; the virus is in fact thermolabile, it is very sensitive to heat, it is not for nothing that the body’s defense mechanism is to raise the temperature ». Therefore, it is useless to rush to the hospital. “You don’t need to get anxious. We must avoid crowding the emergency room unnecessarily, leaving room for those who encounter real emergency situations. In case of flu symptoms, it is advisable to consult your doctors. And above all, let us remember that getting a vaccine, even now in the midst of an epidemic, is the only way we have to protect ourselves ».
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