Patients neither in name nor in fact: two women showed up at a doctor’s office in the city, demanding that the doctor – moreover she was not the one assigned to them by the national health system – interrupt an ongoing visit to give them a prescription. When the general practitioner refused, the two women would have reacted with insults and shoves. It happened in recent days in Brescia, mother and daughter protagonists.
The doctor was allegedly pushed and thrown to the ground. A full-blown physical assault, which triggered the request for help from the police. But the two women would not have calmed down even when a local police patrol arrived: while her mother was being taken to the emergency room, her daughter would in fact have threatened to beat an agent with a stick. For this reason she was reported, together with her mother, for threats, violence and interruption of public service.
Francesco Falsetti, president of the Unione Medici Italiani, comments on the episode as follows: “In our opinion, these repeated, increasingly frequent violence is a sign, even understandable, of frustration for a lack of health response considered within one’s right – reads a note – Unfortunately, citizens do not realize that doctors are not always able to give the expected answers due to the profound disorganization of the national health system also due to the lack of personnel”.
“It should be remembered – continues Falsetti – that the shortage of doctors has reduced and in some cases canceled the right to free choice of doctor (and also of the place of treatment) by the assisted citizen, making one of the founding cornerstones of the national health system disappear compliance with which should be a priority task of the Ministry of Health and the Regions”.
Finally the appeal: “the hope is that the new government will launch a concrete program of national reorganization with adequate resources, in order to avoid the progressive destabilization of public health also determined by poor regional health management tainted by local interests”.