It’s vacation time for doctors too, who in the summer work hours increase in the hospitals of Friuli Venezia Giulia in order not to leave patients unattended to make up for staff shortages which become unsustainable between June and September. Many work overtime to cover the night shifts and 37.3% miss the weekly rest period. Despite the commitment, however, outpatient activities decrease in 62.2% of cases and are remodulated over time in the remaining 37.8% of hospitals in Friuli, while overall the quality of health care, obviously also required in the summer, is significantly compromised in 63% of cases.
The survey conducted by the Federation of Hospital Internal Medicine Doctors (Fadoi) in 8 internal medicine operating units of the Friuli Venezia Giulia hospitals provides an overview of Italian hospitals in the summer period, when the holidays make the gaps in the organic plan unsustainable.
The situation mirrors what is also happening in a large part of the departments of other medical specialties. Even if, as specified by the national president Fadoi Francesco Dentali, “in internal medicines the shortages of staff that are accentuated in the summer rest period make the picture more critical due to the fact that our departments are still erroneously classified as ‘low intensity of care’, which in no way reflects the complexity of elderly patients and with multiple morbidities that we usually treat in our operating units, which alone absorb a fifth of all hospital admissions”. A choice that translates into a “fewer endowment of technologies, doctors and nurses per bed, which becomes explosive in the summer”.
“In Friuli Venezia Giulia, the lack of personnel in the internal medicine departments represents a problem that is not easy to solve in the short term”, comments Stefano De Carli, regional president of Fadoi. “Young graduates prefer to follow more remunerative careers than a longer and more complex one such as internal medicine – adds De Carli -. It follows that the already reduced staff during the year are even more contracted during the summer period”.
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