The Yellow Cockades lead the protest of family doctors: “The system must be changed, the health of patients is at stake”
“Listen to your family doctor”. It is the answer, like a mantra, that the thousands of Tuscan patients hear repeated when they try to contact any health service. It is useless to go around it: the latest wave of Covid infections has once again brought the regional health system to its knees, which apparently did not take advantage of the experiences lived in the previous months. Like last year, the same beach, the same sea: the family doctors pay the price for the flooding of the car, once again having risen to the role of lightning rod and called to fill the double role of doctor and counselor; because in the Covid era, with rules and indications that change constantly, the family doctor has become a bit of a health all-rounder.
This time, however, the family doctors raise the… yellow flag. It is not a surrender at all, God forbid, but – especially in light of the worrying viral escalation in Tuscany, from Monday in the yellow zone – they intend to raise their voices and shout: “No, we can’t go on like this. Help us to be a doctor, help us to help you ‘”.
A yellow flag to change course
The group of Yellow Cockades it was born precisely with the dual purpose of drawing attention to the condition of family doctors and of proposing measures to regional institutions. Currently composed of about 240 health workers, mostly family doctors but also pediatricians, belonging to the area of Ausl Tuscany center – even if the purpose is to involve colleagues belonging to the other two Health Trusts -, Saturday the group launched a social campaign on Facebook to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by general practitioners, characterized by the hashtag #LASCIATISOLI #VORREMMOCURARTI. Monday, instead, it will be the moment of the official: the yellow rosettes symbol of the group will be hung at the doors of the clinics and the usual photo will be taken.
The Coccarde Gialle represent a spontaneous and apolitical movement, which arises from below and transversely groups professionals belonging to different trade unions. On Friday and Saturday, following virtual meetings and comparisons in which over one hundred doctors took part, the group’s objectives were outlined. The problems to be faced are many, as well as the proposals of the “Cockades”; these proposals will be linked and integrated in a form that will then be presented to health and political institutions.
“We are a group of general practitioners born on the web to give each other support in the last two difficult years that have made our work less and less at the service of citizens’ health and increasingly aimed at filling the organizational gaps in the system. – explains the Empoli doctor Iacopo Periti –. Over the past 15 days, the situation has worsened to the point of seriously undermining our ability to adequately care for sick patients. On the other hand, a doctor receives hundreds of phone calls a day from people who do not know what to do, both because they are not contacted by anyone and because the Region continues to change procedures. Suffice it to see the chaos of the tracing: a week ago Tuscany had decided to send text messages from the same Region, then from Sunday we switched to self-reporting on the regional portal precisely because the system collapsed. It was naïve to believe that without adequate structures, tracking could hold up against 80,000 cases to be identified”.
Phone calls and requests: the tsunami that overwhelmed general practitioners
Once the tracking failed, the Region still changes the cards on the table, but with the match in hand they still remain, the family doctors: “It all fell on our shoulders – adds Periti – because we are the only ones that can be contacted directly by patients, who have our telephone and telematic numbers. The situation has become so unmanageable for everyone, even on a voluntary basis we could even take care of swabs, which would be added to the other tasks: vaccinations, swab prescriptions, control of untracked patients. In all this, the doctor should also take care of ‘those who are sick’ beyond Covid. In short, being a doctor is becoming more and more optional because there is no time. I follow around 1600 patients and receive from 100 to 150 phone calls a day; if I was there for even three minutes I’d be on the phone for five or six hours. If we add the five or six hours of surgery and two of home visits, it is easy to reach 14-15 hours a day of work.”.
If all the services, from the toll-free number to the Ausl, do not give answers and indicate to call the family doctor, it is clear that a tsunami is unleashed on the family doctors and that is why the Yellow Cockades intend to advance a reflection on the future of medicine. general, a change of course that you don’t just go through contract changes and which instead presupposes a cultural evolution of general medicine, in addition to a necessary investment of more resources. “To be understood – specifies Periti – the transition from a capital-based job to an hourly job is not a solution to the problems, on the contrary: 38 hours, as foreseen in the draft contract, I work them already in the first days of the week”.
And therefore, on the deck the yellow flag flutters: the flag raised by the sailors of the ships coming out of quarantine. “We would like citizens to listen to us and help those who make the final decisions listen to us – concludes the doctor from Empoli – because the quality of our service and therefore their health is at stake. In fact, it is not simply the amount of work that worries us, but what this overload can cause: if a doctor answers three hundred ‘Covid phone calls’, his lucidity is certainly reduced and it becomes difficult to think of anything other than contagions and epidemics.”.
Giovanni Gaeta
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