A domino effect is putting emergency services in the southeast of the Community of Madrid on the ropes. That is the complaint made this Tuesday by more than a hundred people in a protest in front of the Hospital Universitario del Sureste de Madrid, in Arganda del Rey, where in the last six months 13 of the 25 emergency doctors resigned after experiencing months of work overload caused, in part, by the increase in patients from surrounding municipalities who could not find a doctor to care for them in their health centers. “This has to change, this has to change! Let’s defend the Emergencies and all healthcare” sang at noon this Tuesday health professionals and residents of Arganda and other municipalities in the southeast of the Community. The concern is such that local citizen platforms have called for a second protest for Thursday, October 26 at 7:00 p.m. in front of the Arganda metro station.
Doctors and unions raised their voices for the first time on October 4, when they published a statement warning that physical and psychological fatigue had taken its toll on the emergency team at the Hospital del Sureste, which provides services to more than 200,000 people in 20 municipalities. Eight doctors resigned in September and another five joined later, leaving the area with only 12 of the 25 professionals. The Ministry of Health recognizes that “since last May there have been, progressively, several doctors leaving.” “Some have decided to continue their professional work in other hospitals of the Madrid Health Service (Sermas), in primary care centers in the Community or in healthcare in other countries,” says a spokesperson.
Dr. Clara Fernández, one of the professionals who still resists in the emergency service, explains that the resignation of her colleagues is doubly critical because the Hospital del Sureste is classified by the Ministry of Health as “a center that is difficult to cover.” That is, as an institution where it is difficult for health professionals to reach because it is located on the periphery. “The first week of October was horrible. The strategy was to ‘reduce presence’. That is, if there were nine of us on a morning shift, there were only five of us on the shift. After that, in mid-October, there were measures, but it has not been enough,” says Fernández. The Ministry of Health confirms that the hospital management has had to “reorganize the service” prioritizing urgent, emergent and serious pathologies “so that the rest of the patients with less serious pathologies may see their treatment time increased on some occasions.” wait to be attended to.”
Although Dr. Fernández acknowledges that new doctors were hired, she adds that they soon resigned due to overload. Another measure has been for internal doctors – trauma doctors, for example – to directly care for patients who arrive at the emergency room, but professionals like Fernández fear that this will “displace the problem to other areas.”
Also, as several professionals and hospital users stated during the protest, leaflets have been distributed indicating that non-urgent pathologies can be treated in one of the six care centers in the southeast of the Community. “It is good to inform about the services that are available, but the problem is that some of the Continuing Care Centers to which we refer do not always have a doctor,” says Fernández. A nurse, who asked to reserve her identity, explains that in Morata de Tajuña (12 kilometers from Arganda) the health center does not have a primary or emergency doctor between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. “We don’t know what the real solution to the problem is going to be, because at the moment we are going with patches. If they don’t serve you in Morata, you come to Arganda and if they don’t serve you here either, you would have to go to Madrid,” said Eva Castillo, from the Morata del Tajuña neighborhood association. Patxi, a young man who lives in Tielmes and who has come to the hospital to protest the quality of public healthcare, explains that in his town, located 20 kilometers from Arganda, there are no primary care doctors every day. week. “They don’t have replacements when there are casualties or, also, there are days when they move them to another town because they are needed there,” he says and adds, “then, you come to the Sureste Hospital urgently and you can spend the entire morning or afternoon. The professionals treat you very well, but they do not work in the conditions they should.”
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The chants continue at the protest in front of the main entrance to the hospital. “We are not going to stop, we are not going to stop! “We are defending our health,” chant several neighbors. Milagros Prieto, the mother of one of the emergency professionals, reads the manifesto that challenges the Ministry of Health: “Patience is over, we demand a southeast area with the necessary doctors.” This is not the first time that public health services in Arganda have been “stressed.” Guillermo Hita, spokesperson for the PSOE in the municipal council and former mayor of Arganda, affirms that the issue has been reported several times in the plenary session, but that they will now insist with a motion in the November plenary session. “Southeast Hospital has gone through several ups and downs. The problem of emergencies is mixed with that of out-of-hospital emergencies in other municipalities where there are no doctors every day. The neighbors no longer know where to go,” says Hita, who attended Monday’s protest. The motion that the PSOE has registered demands not only a solution to the emergency service, but also asks to settle debts, such as “urgently undertaking the expansion of the Southeast University Hospital scheduled for 2017″. Dr. Clara Fernández confirms that this expansion was promised to benefit areas such as the Emergency Department, which would now have six open consultations.
Dr. Javier Ortega, president of hospital care of the Amyts union, affirms that the Community of Madrid has one of the solutions on its table. “There is an agreement of the sectoral table to retain doctors and attract new talent to hospitals that are difficult to reach. This included measures that, until now, have not been executed,” says Ortega in a telephone interview. Among the strategies is giving extra points in the Sermas selection processes to professionals who have worked in centers that are difficult to cover and a shorter stay – three years and not five – to advance levels in the professional career. Ortega, who is a general surgeon at the Hospital del Tajo (Aranjuez), also with difficult coverage and where there was a crisis in the emergency room a year ago, warns that “the problem in the Southeast must be stopped now.” Otherwise, he says, “a contagion effect may occur in other emergency services because doctors are on edge.”
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