“Attacks on medical and healthcare personnel, particularly when they are serving in the emergency-urgency system, both territorial and hospital, represent a phenomenon of disturbing degradation, now found at an almost ubiquitous level in various regions. A phenomenon that, unfortunately, not only does not tend to decrease but, on the contrary, shows a statistical trend in clear growth”. This is what Mario Balzanelli, national president of Sis118, says after the umpteenth case, the attack on a doctor during the shift on medical guard in the summer hospital in Maruggio, Taranto. “A reflection is needed that can, in concrete terms, stimulate the legislator to translate the various analyses of the possible causes, at least the foreseeable ones, into concrete and promptly implementable solutions. Only in this way would these attacks be more easily preventable”.
Actions, therefore, and not words. “It gives little joy to those who have been attacked – adds Balzanelli – to receive attestations of moral solidarity and authoritative and firm positions, which are punctually renewed, with each new and brutal episode, by the Institutions and by the numerous emotionally involved colleagues. And the same repressive measures provided for by the current legal system, including ex officio prosecution, can do nothing in terms of deterrence, if they are not systematically and rigorously applied, as is often not done”.
For the number 1 of Sis118, “the causes of the phenomenon lie, mainly, in two reasons. First of all, an alleged excessive delay in the provision of the response requested by the citizen-user for a health problem: this delay is systematically attributed to the doctor or health worker, who is then attacked because he is considered ‘guilty’. Then there is an alleged overall inadequacy of the response provided, which is emotionally considered, by the attacker, not satisfactory with respect to expectations or, in any case, not up to par”. But is it really like this? “The Territorial Emergency System 118, more than any other, suffers the accusation of delay – replies Balzanelli – which in most cases, looking at the objective arrival times of our vehicles in the various most critical scenarios, proves to be truly unfounded”.
“We document this sad reality with the numerous and absurd episodes of aggression against doctors, nurses and drivers-rescuers, promptly reported in the news. These episodes, beyond the secondary repercussions of the various physical injuries, deeply wound the spirit and motivation of the operators and make our shifts less and less serene”. For Balzanelli “it is therefore necessary to give capital answers on the institutional level”.
“From 2017 to today – he recalls – Sis118 highlights and motivates to the legislator that 118 represents the ‘backbone’ of the National Health Service, an increasingly disjointed column, with all the serious consequences that derive from it. At the same time, from 2017 to today the attacks against the personnel who work in the emergency system have increased exponentially. We must go beyond those expressions of solidarity, so welcome but completely ineffective. We believe it is a duty, on the part of the institutions, to summarize and decide to change things. As long as the emergency system, territorial and hospital, is left, from government to government, in conditions of substantial abandonment, deprived of means, with unmotivated medical personnel, poorly paid and increasingly on the run, and therefore increasingly insufficient with respect to the needs imposed by the extremely high relevance and delicacy and complexity of the service, the two protagonists of these stories will always pay the price: the citizens and the operators. Both victims”.
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