Lights off (for a few minutes) in general medicine offices and “candlelight” outpatient visits. This is the protest announced by the Fimmg (Italian Federation of general practitioners) in Puglia as well as in the rest of the country for December 15th.
A symbolic gesture, “to denounce – explains Fimmg in a note – the serious situation in general medicine: personnel shortages, lack of funding for its structural and functional strengthening, inadequate programming, “bureaucratisation” of the profession and an unsustainable increase in number of patients in the face of an unacceptable lack of secretarial staff. All these factors subtract time from clinical and assistance activities, undermining the sustainability of a system based on the value of the relationship of trust”.
“The Puglia Region has ignored our repeated appeals, letting the situation degenerate. Now the sustainability of the entire regional health system is at risk”, explains Donato Monopoli, Secretary of Fimmg Puglia.
“For a few minutes the lights of our studies will go out, which are a point of reference for citizens and a pillar of the national health service – continues Monopoli – We want to avoid the risk that they go out forever and that the NHS goes out with them We used a symbolic gesture, in order not to resort to more radical protest systems which, in this moment of peak seasonal flu and resurgence of the pandemic, would be contrary to the sense of responsibility towards citizens that has always characterized our profession”.