breaking latest news – There is Mrs. Maria, 96, sitting in the cold in the waiting room of the Emergency Department at the San Giovanni hospital in Rome. She has an ear tumor and internal bleeding, but she waits her turn in a wheelchair while she witnesses the quarrel between the nurses and the relatives, disturbed by the wait and by what they define: “Lack of empathy on the part of the health personnel “.
It is a “dramatic picture” – quoting the words of the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci – the one represented by the relatives of the patients who, speaking with the breaking latest news, they tell of endless waiting outside the Emergency Department, absence of news on the patient on duty – often these are very elderly people – and also difficulty in relating to healthcare professionals, overburdened by too much work and, for some, by too restrictive rules still in use to protect patients from Covid-19.
It’s like that everywhere. At the Santo Spirito, a stone’s throw from Piazza San Pietro, there are about ten people waiting for news. They are outside, but the patients can be glimpsed: they are leaning on stretchers in front of a cage. Relatives are out in the cold. “Sometimes they don’t seem to realize what a relative experiences outside a structure: yesterday a person was here 6 hours waiting for news and didn’t even get any. I have my aunt hospitalized and last night I wanted to give her the phone, but they wouldn’t let me in”, Alessandra, 53, tells breaking latest news. “I came back today, they called me, but they’re always out here and the request is always the same: wait again,” he adds.
It so happens that Alessandra’s aunt is a doctor, “so I know the difficulties of the sector, the cuts, the problems, but today there is no crowd, there are ambulances lined up here and people chatting”, says the 53 years old. Even if, given the stretchers at the reception, the wards would seem full and in difficulty.
“But is it possible that homeless people come and go in the evening and relatives can’t come in instead? I don’t understand. Are there few doctors? Ask yourself why they leave“, says Massimo, 63 years old who is waiting for his wife and recounts: “Yesterday evening there was a woman waiting, her father had been hospitalized the night before and she said: ‘I’ve been asking about my father for 6 hours, he has senile dementia . It is impossible not to have news”.
Dramatic stories that go on: “For two evenings the lady I have been assisting has been in the emergency room and no one has given us any news, now I’ve been here for an hour. She has dementia and no one says anything to me. I would like to see her for at least 5 minutes”, he says Flori, a 57-year-old Romanian, carer by profession. A role that she plays with great dedication. “I love her and I feel bad about not having news. Little or nothing was said to her son last night. We are very worried: she has head and heart problems”, adds the 57-year-old who complains: “health care does not work , we waited 2 and a half hours to have the ambulance at home and the lady could have died”.
A widespread problem
We change hospitals, but the problems are similar. “Dad is 88 years old and has been in the emergency room since Sunday morning with a broken humerus: we don’t know anything. No one has contacted us. We are here to see if he is still alive”, Stefania, 61, explained to breaking latest news Antonella, 57 years old. We are in front of the San Camillo hospital in Monteverde. There are people in line and the two are on the sidelines, with tears in their eyes. “We went to the Urp saying we will call the carabinieri. The only contact with dad was thanks to a roommate who had a cell phone, then nothing more”, they say. And the story of the first night is dramatic: “He slept with his coat on, his shirt got bloody from an IV that broke off. The next day I brought him a pajama jacket, he was terrified, he felt abandoned” , they remember.
E the experience at San Camillo was not positive not even for the mother, also an 89-year-old woman. “Two months ago we brought mom, devastated by a stroke dating back to two years ago, because she didn’t wake up. She didn’t even realize that they had taken her away: she was in the emergency room for two days and no one told him why she was there. Mom is almost 100% disabled”, they say. “We wouldn’t have wanted to repeat the experience with dad too, but the ambulance from home brings them here. The stories are similar to each other and, what is really striking, is the lack of information. “They admitted my wife last night at 11.30pm, she’s 74 and I think she’s had a stroke. I say ‘I think’, because I have no news of her. I don’t know anything about anything. What is totally missing is contact with the patient and with relatives, even the closest ones”, Giorgio, 80, told breaking latest news.
“I stayed until 4 in the morning and it was rather calm, perhaps there are few doctors or nurses and that’s why they can’t listen to us”, he reasons as he closes his coat. Then there are those who, like 38-year-old Eleonora, don’t know what happened to their mother. “She came in yesterday for a broken rib, but it turned out she had Covid, now they’re hospitalizing her in Pulmonology, but she wasn’t sick. She’s had a slight form of flu in recent days, now nothing, but they still take her to that ward “. We are talking about a 65-year-old woman who suffers from depression and for this reason she asked to speak to a psychiatrist too. “However, it was denied at the moment”, explains Eleonora. “With Covid everything is even more complicated. Among other things, no one says it anymore, precisely to avoid these problems: in my son’s class everyone has had Covid and no one has said it. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought my mother here” , he reasons.
At the San Giovanni the situation was tense right from the start. Between those who have their brother hospitalized and no news and those who complain of little attention to the sick, there are moments of tension and this would seem to be nothing new. “Relatives like these are to blame if we fail to do our job well,” says a health worker trying to calm things down. “My brother has been here for 4 days and I have not spoken to a doctor who is one. Now I have asked to speak to the person in charge of the Emergency Department, but is it possible that it is not possible to speak to anyone? My brother was unable to move his hands and for all I know he could be dead,” he says, red in the face and after arguing with a nurse. Meanwhile, still in front of the emergency room, another quarrel breaks out: “I’ve been coming here for 3 days, but I don’t see anyone. Let me see him, I was there for two minutes. This is not kindness, you’re kidding me”, shouts a man in his 40s who then leaves.
Another approaches: “My mother-in-law is 96 years old and she’s been there in the cold since 8.30 this morning. Here she catches the flu. Put her on one side where she doesn’t get air, but if she was your mother, would you leave her here?” , roars Renato, 72 years old. Meanwhile another nurse comes out, tries to calm things down: “I don’t want anyone in front of us, we’re overloaded”, he says. “We don’t know what to do,” he admits. “The other day a lady was kicked by a relative. But does she seem normal to you?”, The same nurse says to breaking latest news seeking comfort. “Here in Italy they all have to be put against the wall, other than the fascists and Meloni: now I’m calling in the carabinieri”, adds Renato. His wife – Mrs. Marianna, 64 – tries to defuse. “My mother left here on November 4, we had to start radiotherapy for an ear tumour, we also went to Tor Vergata where the situation is no better and before that to Umberto Primo, now we’re back here with a haemorrhage and if they send her home, she dies. They have to cure her,” says the woman.
At the Sandro Pertini hospital, in the Roman suburb of Tiburtina, things are no better: there are about 20 relatives in line to get news that, on time, will not arrive. But at least we’re inside in a waiting room reminiscent of the pre-pandemic years. “We are waiting for them to give us an alternative route, my son got hurt playing basketball and we cannot enter because they discovered through a swab that I am positive for Sars-Cov2. I am fine and he is negative, but we still have to wait for another path”, says Ermanno, 62 years old. Serena, 48, is also in the waiting room. Her aunt, an 84-year-old woman, has been hospitalized since yesterday, but there is no news.
“Yesterday evening hospitalized, because she was in a rest home, they told us it was useless and to come back at 9 in the morning. We arrived at 11, but nobody tells you anything”, she says discouraged. “We feel abandoned and it’s not the first time, it’s the same thing at the Umberto Primo Polyclinic where she was hospitalized for 3 weeks and I only saw her 3 times. On that occasion my aunt said: ‘I thought you had abandoned me.’ “, says the woman. Heavy words to which is added the request for the woman to show the Green pass which, in theory, would no longer be required.
“They still observe restrictions due to Covid and they asked me for the Green pass even if it is no longer mandatory”, he told breaking latest news. “But if they make unvaccinated doctors and nurses go back to work, why do they ask me for a certificate?”, he asks. A question that has no answer or, at least, has not been answered.