The Clinical Decision Unit 2 of the Braga Hospital emergency room was overcrowded during the afternoon of Wednesday, with one wing holding 40 users, when it will only have capacity for 16.
Eva Salgado, Member of the Nursing Council of the Northern Section of the Order of Nurses, confirmed the case to the newspaper Observer, realizing that patients “stay in the middle of the room” through images recorded by nurses of that hospital unit.
O peak flu that has been felt throughout the country is reflected in this service, and this is the justification of the administration of the hospital, now a public business entity, admitting “some occasional situations of overcrowding.”
Responding to the digital newspaper, the hospital indicates that the “daily influx of users” has been increasing “foreseeable for the time”, and there is already a reinforced contingency plan with team adjustment “to the needs and activation of beds”.
Photo: Disclosure / Order of Nurses
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The “quality of health care” will not be at stake during this period of increased attendance at the emergency service, the administration guarantees.
As for the periods when stretchers are in the middle of the room, “they are resolved as quickly as possible to reduce impact on users.” The hospital says it “continues to respond to the population.”
But nurse Eva Salgado does not see the contingency plan to address this issue. He says this is “an extra 30 beds in hospital whenever they notice that it is difficult to get patients out of the emergency room”, but “not even with this increase can solve”.
In September, emergencies had a similar peak of influx, leading to ambulances standing for hours outside the hospital, waiting for patients to enter their wards to release the stretcher from the car.
A O MINHO, the hospital ensured that “every effort was being made by the team of emergency service professionals for a timely response so as not to create embarrassment”.
But there have been many complaints from senior managers of different fire brigades that the hospital is not prepared to deal with this kind of overcrowding when there are surges.
“The cars are waiting in the emergency room because the emergency seems almost to a standstill (…) so it is very difficult to secure help in our county,” said one of the commanders.
Regardless of being managed by an EPE or a PPP, the Braga Hospital has always felt complaints of lack of capacity of different infrastructures to receive users. Eva Salgado, when Observer, confirm, saying that “the situation has not improved” with the move from management to a public entity.
In an article in the Order of Doctors Magazine, dated 2013, the same problem is reported in relation to the rooms of the UDC, where are the patients with orange bracelet, the second most serious on a scale of four. It is reported that in one of them, with 22 beds, were 27 users, on family visit day.
“Of course this undermines our work as professionals. Nurses can’t do more with less. They have more and more sick and less means ”, confirmed Eva Salgado.
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