Health centers and Primary Emergency services concentrate the highest number of incidents
From the applause of the first wave to an exponential increase in aggression, especially in Primary. Health personnel face an increasingly rarefied climate and tension sometimes leads to insults, threats or even physical violence. Antonio, a family doctor at the Águilas Norte health center, is awaiting trial against a patient who assaulted him last summer. “He was the father of a boy who had tested positive. Being a close contact, he had to spend ten days in quarantine and I explained that, by protocol, the PCR had to be done in a few days, because it is a test that must be given time so that there is sufficient viral load, “he recalls. .
But the man didn’t care about those clarifications. He wanted his PCR now, so twenty minutes later he returned to the office visibly upset. “He spat in my face, threatened to pull out a knife and I got us to go outside to the waiting room. He began to break furniture in the center and clashed with administrators, nurses and the pediatrician of his children », relates the doctor.
The worst, he denounces, is that insults, lack of respect and, in general, verbal violence are becoming an everyday thing. “All my fellow doctors at this center have suffered from it,” she laments. The origin, she reflects, is multiple. “In Águilas Norte, 23,000 people are served and, before the pandemic, we had between 2,500 and 3,000 people here every day, without security guards or access control.”
Antonio has had the support of the Occupational Health doctor, but not with the support of his superiors in the area. «He has not called me anyone; I have been abandoned before, during and after.
“Broke the window”
Also in the Primary Care Emergency Service (SUAP) of Jumilla violent behaviors occur. Fifteen days ago, a man “threatened to set everything on fire and broke a windowpane,” says a professional. The aggressor did not demand health care, but “a roof”. “Here we are open to everyone and people come to us with all kinds of problems,” explains the toilet. Aggressions have skyrocketed after the pandemic. “People go to the health center and they don’t attend to them without an appointment, so they come to the SUAP with anger, with rage, and you take it on yourself. The threats are continuous. We knew that the applause was fictitious, that later we would have to pay a price, and so it has been. We are the scapegoat”, laments this professional from Jumilla.
In Workers’ Commissions they are “very concerned”. “We have gone from being the heroes of the pandemic to becoming villains. First we suffered the scourge of the virus and now the scourge of the dissatisfaction of many users, ”reflects Mario Moreno, head of occupational health at the CC OO Health Federation.
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