First aid, departments and services in the area need reinforcements The unions: “The contract for the 800 hired in the spring has expired”
Guido Filippi
27 October 2020
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Genoa. Doctors and nurses are needed to treat the sick: Liguria lacks anesthesiologists, infectious disease specialists, emergency room doctors and radiologists. The Region has given the green light to about fifty hires (for at least 12 months), but it will be impossible: if all goes well, we will find twenty of them and in any case it will take at least two months before they make the competition and take up service, provided that they do not waste more time. In recent months, when the situation had improved, it was felt that it was inappropriate to hire specialists. And now we are in full emergency. Maybe Alisa’s direction was missing or there was an excess of optimism ». The president of the Medical Association of Genoa Alessandro Bonsignore repeats that “it will be a challenge to find doctors to hire”. It is preparing the list of doctors, young and retired, to which ASL and hospitals can be offered a fixed-term contract. «As between March and April when 800 doctors were hired in Liguria, of which more than 700 recent graduates and at least 50 retirees. Then the government did not extend the state of emergency in time and 80 of the contracts expired. The green light from Rome arrived on 7 October, but many young people have entered specialty schools and now the call is restarting. We also wrote to freelancers: there’s room for them too ».
Bonsignore points out that, last week, the Region allocated resources to stabilize 750 doctors and the same number of nurses “but in Liguria we have had the problem of specialists for years: we are out of the market and cannot stand the competition of Lombardy and Piedmont, as well as of private structures not Ligurian. The basic salary of an emergency room doctor of an anesthesiologist is around 2700 euros net per month if he works at San Martino, but it becomes at least 3100 if he works at the hospital in Alessandria or Milan, thanks to incentives and overtime. I also talked about it with Toti who has undertaken to intervene ». In the last two years, the escape from the Ligurian healthcare, by choice of life or salary, has involved about fifteen anesthetists, as many emergency room doctors, a dozen orthopedists, radiologists and infectious diseases. “The emergency is national – says Giovanni Battista Traverso, regional secretary of Anaao, the most representative union of white coats – and specialists are lacking everywhere, but in Liguria we are not attractive and young people are choosing Lombardy and Piedmont more and more. Here those who work on the front line are exhausted and the area needs doctors to be able to treat the sick at home and avoid clogging up the hospitals. The commitments of the Region are fine but we cannot think of solving in two months a problem that has not been addressed over the years ».
At San Martino the call to hire 580 nurses (with a one-year contract) also started two days ago, but the administrative director Salvatore Giuffrida would jump for joy if he could hire a third within 10 days “It will be a feat, there are few on the market ». Carmelo Gagliano, Ligurian coordinator of the College of Nurses, talks about lower numbers: “If all goes well, there will be 100, all people who already work at Asl 3, Galliera or RSA: in practice it is a transfer, the San Martino and worse the others. Then perhaps 150-200 from other regions will respond and run away at the first opportunity as has already happened for at least 100 colleagues in the last year. In mid-December we will be able to count on 185 fresh graduates from the course ».
The Ligurian secretary of the CISL Gabriele Bertocchi criticizes Alisa on personnel management. «He wasted time and underestimated the arrival of the second leg: the resources are there, there is no organization. I remember what happened with the competition for social and health workers: it was banned a year and a half ago and it is still there: there are more than 6,000 applications. The nurses are exhausted and only part of those who have retired have been replaced. At least a year and a half will pass for permanent hires ». Alisa’s commissioner Walter Locatelli prefers not to reply. “Without doctors and nurses the system collapses,” Gagliano repeats. –
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