The president of the Medici Order of Florence Pietro Dattolo © Met
The analysis of the regional situation of the president of the Order of Doctors is very severe two years after the start of the pandemic and in full fourth wave with Omricon that is bringing the country to its knees and also that economy that seemed to be heading towards a new boom.
“We are facing an organizational disaster at all levels. European, national and regional.
Two years of pandemic have taught us nothing and we find ourselves in a moment of enormous difficulty, even greater if possible than in the past. The hires were few. The vaccination obligation was imposed late. The medicine of the abandoned territory “. Like this Piero Dattolo, president of the Medici Order of Florence.
“Just go to hospitals to understand the gravity of the situation: full wards, emergency room at the limit of capacity. All complicated and aggravated by the infections of doctors and nurses who reduce the staff even more.
Fortunately, the disease has changed, it is difficult to find serious pictures like those of a year ago. And the most serious pictures, those who go to resuscitation, are no vax or people with multiple pathologies.
So the first question is: why are these people not cared for at home?
Because local medicine does not exist, family doctors have been left to fend for themselves. I receive phone calls from desperate family doctors, who have to answer 300 phone calls a day from people who also ask if their child’s ingrown nail has something to do with Covid and therefore risk not being able to answer and visit those who really need it. We are waiting for this Pnrr but I have many doubts that the situation can improve ” explains Dattolo.
And the territorial network the great defeat of this phase for the president of the Order of Florentine doctors:
“Abandoned local medicine, desperate family doctors, truly heroes except for a few exceptions which only confirm the rule. And therefore citizens who do not know what to do and go to the emergency room.
Which is in serious difficulty: the doctors no longer want to be there, the nurses are overburdened and worried. In addition, the emergency room can only hospitalize people, because there are no suitable structures capable of welcoming in the area. Hospitals are full of often avoidable hospitalizations, of people who could be treated elsewhere. And the hospitalizations of people who risk dying without hospital assistance run the risk of not being able to do it. In 30 years that I have been a nephrologist it is the first time that I am seeing people die of kidney failure, it had never happened to me. And so on. Myocardial infarction has increased, strokes have increased, many more die from diseases no Covid “ Dattolo points out.
The late hiring is the most serious problem: “We had two years to hire doctors and nurses and we didn’t do it except partially.
The government put little money into the recruitment of doctors and therefore the Region had said that it could not be hired and that the staff had to remain that of 2019. For this I have to thank, both personally and professionally, Federico Gelli who, on 4 January, issued a directive that would unblock hires “where necessary”, for all ASLs, underlining among other things that hiring for Covid and those to guarantee essential services to citizens, are not part of the current budget, they are extra.
We hope that hiring and reorganization will move forward. This is essential to continue to have a universal and free national and regional health system for all. Who cares for those in need. Bureaucracy also gets involved in such a situation: the DL 172 of November 26, 2021, written in a confused way to say the least, has put in the hands of the provincial orders the verification and possible suspension of vaccination failures of its members, after Regions and ASL had failed. This is a huge problem.
There have been reports of 914 doctors who would not have complied with the obligations and in reality they are almost all in good standing. The rigidity of IT systems is a big problem, it forces us to send warnings to people who do not comply with the vaccination obligation, but only for problems in the databases “ Dattolo denounces.