There was a hurricane. Indeed, it still rages, even if it has greatly mitigated its virulence. The dead still number in the hundreds every day, but people have stopped being afraid. You see crowds of people in front of the family doctor’s door, on the sidewalks, on the landings of buildings: in the waiting room no more than four, the others wait outside, elbow to elbow. Not even the Covid wind disperses them. He finally enters because you had made an appointment a few days earlier. There are those who yell the request for him to the nurse who opened the door. The doctor comes and goes from his room, now to go to the secretary, now to give an answer to a person waiting outside.
He walks with his mobile phone glued to his ear and lets the patient in on duty enter. He comes out after five minutes with his cell phone ringing, handing it to the nurse. The secretary is on the landline: hard to find free. A sign informs us about the procedure to follow to obtain the certificate of recovery. We work frantically but not everyone is satisfied: the relationship becomes conflicting. And to say that soon, according to the new national plan of the agreement, this study will be able to refer 1,800 patients instead of the 1,500 established by previous contracts.
The doctor to her patients: “Get vaccinated or change doctors”
by Donatella Zorzetto
Where will the relationship of trust between doctor and patient go? The convention defines mutual trust as fundamental. Thanks to the epidemic, however, there was a progressive fraying of relations. If the patients increase, if the workload for the doctor increases further, what could we recover? It would be appropriate to wait for the end of the emergency, but we continue to make mistakes.
Mistakes were made from the start, when everyone knew and no one lifted a finger. When the epidemic was upon us, but everyone had something more important to do. No directives or information for local health authorities, hospitals and general practitioners. This was the disheartening beginning, then an avalanche of circulars, decrees and regulations. And who forgets the shame of masks? It was assumed that they would be needed in quantity, but precious time was wasted. When finally the import rush starts, it turns out that you can’t race. Some bureaucratic mechanisms take longer than expected. If it hadn’t been for the urgency of having those principals who could save lives, no one would have noticed: the expansion of times and costs is part of the Italian custom.
Mistakes also in the management of hospitals? Not one. The creation of ghetti-covids was justified by the drama of the first phase, but today we cannot insist on that line. All the necessary precautions must be taken, but the cancer patient has the right to be treated by oncologists, as well as the cardiopath and the surgical patient, even if affected by Covid they must follow their diagnostic-therapeutic path in the relevant divisions. It is inevitable that the level of care will drop a lot when a patient is followed out of the ward.
Covid and hospitals: “Enough with the ghetto wards for those who do not have the symptoms of the disease”
by Giuseppe del Bello
The intermittent closure of hospitals to the public, which occurred in many regions, has confused the chronically ill who belong to these structures. Mrs Nunzia, who was operated on in 2008 for breast cancer, has always respected the steps foreseen for prevention, until the outbreak of the pandemic. She was hospitalized four months ago for a voluminous umbilical hernia, she discovered a resurgence of the tumor, unfortunately at an advanced stage.
The shock wave suffered by all healthcare workers was tremendous. From the impact with an unknown and deadly disease, faced alone and without weapons, to the growing slew of new tasks and additional commitments that the pandemic has brought. All without defenses, without protections, without adequate recognition.