the oncologist ends up in emergency medicine

The shortage of medical personnel was the largest health flaw in Campania during the management of the acute phase of the pandemic from Covid 19. There is a lack of doctors, nurses, social health workers, and the Hospital of the Sea it was one of the theaters where this structural lack, never filled, and now the problem is re-proposed in new emergency forms. The deficit mainly concerns emergency / urgent doctors, starting with those employed in the emergency room of the hospital in East Naples. As reported by the CGIL, to address the shortage of doctors, the health management is forcing doctors with other specializations to serve in the emergency room . A circumstance that could be very dangerous as well as outside the law.

The case: an oncologist in emergency medicine

The CGIL denounces a specific case took place at the end of June which, according to union sources, is about to become a practice in the summer months. “Last June 25 during a night shift – writes the union in a note – an oncologist medical director, specialization not equivalent and / or similar to Emergency Medicine / Urgency, received a service order to cover the shift in Emergency Medicine (Mecau), a shift that was known to have been discovered for at least 20 days and therefore not a sudden and unexpected situation“. The doctor in question also had to cover the shift in his own ward and that of internal medicine for a total of 60 patients. It is easy to imagine that in these conditions it is difficult to provide assistance effectively. But what is worrying is the ‘use of professionalism that is technically defined as “non-equivalent”. Basically, putting a medical manager specialized in another branch to assist patients in emergency / urgency, perhaps affected by polytrauma or other pathologies not related to his specialization it can be risky and very dangerous. Not only that, as the CGIL reiterates: “Often the service order, illegitimately, is also addressed to medical executives with non-equivalent specializations and / or similar to Emergency / Urgency Medicine, despite several judgments having reiterated that the doctor cannot be used in tasks that go beyond his own specialization“. The circumstance would therefore also violate the regulations in force as well as representing an inappropriate performance that can penalize the quality of care.

Service orders to fill the deficit

What would seem to be missing entirely is a planning of the health management able to deal with the chronic shortage of doctors in the most delicate emergency / urgent departments. The union, in the note sent to the health management, reserves the right to take all possible initiatives if it continues with the use of the service order to non-equivalent doctors to provide emergency / urgent service. The situation could worsen further in the coming weeks as August approaches and the vacation period of medical personnel. In this scenario, medical managers could be forced to cover shifts in multiple departments at the same time including the emergency room, managing an unspecified number of patients. What is further perplexing is that the personnel organization should have found greater efficiency after the closure of some Covid departments of the Ospedale del Mare. But instead of reorganizing resources, the union underlines, the health management has decided not to plan and to proceed with service orders to non-equivalent doctors. In short, the structural difficulties of Campania’s healthcare have not changed after the acute phase of the first, second and third wave of the Coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, perhaps they have even gotten worse.