PORDENONE – The Covid emergency, which in the last two years has been very heavy for the ward, and the lack of pulmonologists put the Pneumology department of the Santa Maria degli Angeli hospital in Pordenone at risk. So much so that, given the serious situation, the management of the health company had to run for cover through a reorganization. In fact, the department was converted into a Covid Medicine under the direction of the Department of the Medical area led by the head of Medicine One and Two, Maurizio Tonizzo. A way to enable pulmonologists to be supported through the support of medical internists and infectious doctors of the simple structure led by the manager Massimo Crapis. In fact, therefore, Pneumology will turn into Covid Medicine, since the other two Medicine departments have now been Covid free for weeks. While patients with pneumological pathologies only continue to be treated by pulmonologists and followed in the no-Covid beds, as well as by the network of pneumological clinics that has always remained active. Patients hospitalized due to the virus are instead followed by a pool of pulmonologists, internists and infectious disease specialists. A provisional solution, at least in the intentions of the Asfo management. But the concern among the staff – and in their trade unions – is now increasing day by day. Fears are facing the future: once the pandemic is cleared, what will happen to the ward? Will it remain a kind of Medicine 3? Or will it go back to being a full-fledged Pneumology? For now there are no certain answers.
DIFFICULTIES
The thirty beds in the ward, during the health emergency, had to respond to the incessant request for hospitalization of Covid patients even with a certain number of semi-intensive care places. Only in the last few weeks has the situation improved. A very difficult period in which the operators (led by the head physician Umberto Zuccon, heir to the long tradition of a department considered the pride of the region, always in the trenches with his men) fought a very intense battle against the pandemic. But the ward is now paying for the two terrible years of emergency: a period in which – also due to very heavy work shifts, the shortage of nursing staff and the risks associated with the possibility of becoming infected – several pulmonologists have chosen to leave the ward. From eleven the doctors remained four, in addition to the head physician. «We had to resort to reorganization – underlines the general manager Joseph Polimeni – precisely because the number of doctors has decreased. And pulmonology specialists are the hardest thing to find on the health professions market right now. A reorganization was implemented led by the head of the Medicine department and the head of infectious disease specialists. A multidisciplinary pool was thus formed which supports pulmonology specialists. It is – adds the director – a provisional solution. It is necessary to dab as long as there are hospitalizations of Covid patients. Then it is our goal to maintain the complex structure with the primary Zuccon just appointed by me ».
The management hopes that the difficulty will be “transitory” with the aim of recruiting new specialists. But worries about the department’s future among staff are mounting. And yesterday, in the meantime, new alarms, in addition to those of the past few weeks, came from local politics. The civic good common has launched an appeal: “We ask the mayor Ciriani to urgently convene an assembly of mayors and to give concrete feedback to the struggle of health personnel, supporting the strike on May 13 next”.