Luckily this time it didn’t go deserted, but yet another competition launched by the Region, through Azienda Zero, to recruit new emergency room doctors, saw just a third of the required applicants participate. In the face of 154 open placesthey have arrived 59 questions. And it doesn’t even mean that they remain so, they could decrease – he warns Manuela Lanzarin, Councilor for Health and Social Affairs — a commission will have to verify whether the doctors who have applied have the required qualifications. By now finding white coats for emergencies has become a problem, in the specialization schools of Padua and Verona enrollments have collapsed and not even the 100 euros gross per hour agreements with the unions for the benefit of public service employees willing to cover a few shifts in the emergency room are giving the desired results.
The causes of the escape
But why has this career, once coveted enough to fuel many successful TV series, lost all appeal today? Young people do not enroll in specialization schools, 43% of the scholarships available remain unassigned – reveals Biagio Epifani, Venetian president of the Italian Society of Emergency-Urgency Medicine -. The initial node that at the Pronto Soccorso is now dealing with everything, not just urgent cases, and this does not meet the expectations of recent graduates. And then we are the only specialists a not being able to integrate the salary with the free professionon the other hand we have to bear an enormous workload and when you are tired the risk of error increases, together with the contentious. We live in an emergency, patients arrive with many unknowns, yet our salary is not adequate for the responsibilities and the level of stress it entails – adds Epifani -. We are overworked, we also have to take care of an ever-growing number of elderly people, many of whom could be entrusted to local medicine. We trust in the future Community Houses envisaged by the Pnrr.
The nightmare of attacks
And then there is the nightmare of assaults by patients and family members exasperated by long waits, dubious diagnoses and disservices also linked to staff shortages. All the surveys conducted by the category acronyms, by Doctors Orders and third-party agencies identify emergency department operators as the target par excellence. I’m on the front line,” he underlines Luca Barutta, regional secretary of Anaao Assomed, hospital union — and for some time now there have been no police posts in the emergency rooms. Healthcare companies could at least hire the security guards, given that they contract out many services to cooperatives. It would serve as a deterrent, to protect colleagues already exhausted by an impressive number of shifts, which eliminates free time and deteriorates the working environment. The reduction of family doctors has in fact led to a surge in access to the Emergency Department (a total of 2 million a year in the Veneto region, ndr) – continues Barutta – which on the one hand has further increased the wait and therefore the irritation of the people, on the other it has canceled the recovery times for the doctors. After having visited 30-40 patients in one day, moreover with the most disparate pathologies, a professional so destroyed that the error can escape. The other filter that has blown are the small hospitals, which no longer have an emergency room and therefore send patients to the hubs, which are always clogged because they have fewer staff than in the past.
The possible solutions
The way out is not around the corner but unites all of Italy and so the Regions have decided to team up, requesting a meeting with the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci. We have set up a work plan which addresses the critical issues underlying the loss of appeal of the Emergency Department, such as a blocked career, burnout, the high clinical and litigation risk, to find common and concrete solutions, confirms Lanzarin. Meanwhile the last competition launched by Azienda Zero, it will collect applications until March and others will be banished from it. Where we will not be able to find doctors, to avoid the interruption of the service we will be forced to resort to cooperatives – closes the commissioner -. But the Local Health Authorities will have to keep them under control, as set out in a circular of the director general of Sanit, Luciano Flor. And the fee for token holders is blocked at 100 gross euros per hour.
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December 7, 2022 (change December 7, 2022 | 09:57)
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