The elderly lady who needs a prescription for a knee x-ray starts calling early in the morning. But the phone is already busy. The forty-year-old mother who would like to do the usual check-up relies on whatsapp. However, in the end, she too will have to be patient a lot, because i medici they are few, while instead they continue to increase non-stop i positive patients looking for the family doctor even just to know where to do a swab.
«We are exhausted, we are exhausted – he repeats almost disconsolately Claudio Cricelli, president of the Italian Society of General Practice and Primary Care – we have a 500-fold increase in contact requests. They mostly call us for information, they ask us where we are vaccinate, how do you behave if you are positive. By now – recalls Cricelli – one person in 30-40 is positive. We know that 70-75 of these are asymptomatic, the others need antiviral therapies. And then we must continue to follow people with chronicity ».
Compulsory vaccine for over 60s? The hypotheses on the government table to counter the Omicron variant
Omicron, highly effective third dose after 2 weeks: the questions and answers of the Iss Faq
Phone takes overi
Being able to even answer the phone is often impossible. «It is clear that the time remaining to take care of people is extremely limited – admits Cricelli – and with great effort we manage to cure them all. The day before yesterday, a colleague of mine in Brescia did 31 swabs and 28 tested positive. That is, he spent about three hours just for these tests. But what makes our work complicated is the bureaucracy. There is no call center for information and people come to us ».
The resources to cope with the overload of work are insufficient, and so not even the secretary, for those who have it, is able to pass all the phone calls on hold. “The health service – Cricelli complains – has increased intensive care, has hired new doctors, but no new resources have been given to help general medicine”.
Anywhere, being able to talk to your doctor is a lottery game. “There are two of us in my office in Rome – says Pina Onotri, general secretary of the Italian doctors’ union – The day before yesterday we received 150 calls, without considering those that arrive on the cell phone. The lines are always clogged. We try to answer everyone. But 14 hours of work a day, including holidays, are not enough ».
And so chronic patients struggle to get answers. “We have to deal with the positives, those who have come into contact with an infected person, and then we have to keep up with all the bureaucracy – specifies Onotri – We report to the hygiene and public health services, then we think about the prescription of tampons, end of isolation certificates. But the workload due to positive patients adds to what we do normally ».
Meanwhile, checks and skipped specialist visits continue to accumulate. «Now it is difficult to recover them – admits Onotri – Let’s not forget that the other diseases did not go on vacation. Cardiopaths, diabetics, serious cancer patients need treatment and assistance ».
Even in Campania the situation is difficult. «I receive about 200 phone calls a day – says Silvestro Scotti, national secretary of Fimmg (the Italian Federation of general practitioners) – The number of infected is enormous. The impact at this time is above all in subjects between 10 and 30 years with family involvement. If in the other waves some family contained the infection only to the infected, now within three days they are all infected “.
“Complex procedures”
And it’s not just asymptomatic. «A patient of mine, vaccinated but immunosuppressed, was infected by her two no vax children and ended up in hospital. In the meantime, I answer the phone even during the days when the prevention departments are closed – Scotti reports – There is no one there on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays to activate the reservations for tampons. And patients always come to us. We activate the procedure, the assistance one, for the anticovid therapies, for the tampon. If a worker asks for a certificate of illness – Scotti observes – the mechanism is complicated by new regulations on quarantines and isolation, and now on self-monitoring. We have to explain everything ourselves, and this extends the time of the phone call. The other day, it took me 20 minutes to check the blood pressure of a patient who appeared to be having a hypertensive crisis, because I was interrupted by phone calls. The workload is really unsustainable ».
© breaking latest news
.