Objections to the Unified List of Surgeries that will start from February 1 are filed by surgeons. However, the Panhellenic Federation of Hospital Workers also lodges objections to the afternoon surgeries.
The Minister of Health, Adonis Georgiadis, speaking recently to the administrators of the country’s nursing units, referring to the Unified List of Surgeries, emphasized: “I will not tolerate corruption and inequalities. There will be a check and data on the surgery lists.” In the same meeting, Mr. Georgiadis referred to the new working conditions of the hospital doctors in the new NHS that he described he will create. In particular, it will give the medical corps the opportunity to legally collect more money, through the afternoon surgeries that will be paid for by citizens, as well as for the private work they will be able to do.
We asked the professor and director of the Department of Surgery of the University Hospital of Patras, Yannis Maroulis, to give us his opinion on both issues.
Initially, the professor explained that there are waiting lists in the country’s major hospitals, such as the University Hospital of Patras, which, among others, is able to perform specialized surgeries.
Regarding the afternoon surgeries, he said that “it is useful to do them. But before that, the right conditions should be ensured. This means support with staff of the required specialties from the nursing staff to the secretariat. The system needs a lot of organization. It’s not simple.”
Regarding the Single List of Surgeries, Mr. Maroulis believes that “it has many disadvantages” and explains: “Mostly these concern the patient. Moving from hospital to hospital will result in losing the continuity of his follow-up. For example, a patient comes to the University Hospital to be operated on. We open his file with all his details, we do the planning, the preparation, because he may have other diseases, receive some therapeutic treatment, etc. We have his direct supervision. If this case through the Single List is referred to Agrinio to be operated upon, you realize that all this preparation is wasted. There are also social parameters that concern the patient himself and his family who will be asked to move to another area.”
The professor emphasizes that other measures should be taken before the Unified List of Surgeries. “Obviously the surgery lists will have to be addressed. But a key measure for this is the reinforcement of the staff, so that all the closed operating theaters we have today can function. For example, today we schedule surgeries and there are no nurses and anesthesiologists to support them. This needs to be addressed. And then the afternoon surgeries should also operate. The problem is not solved by moving patients from hospital to hospital.”
POEDIN makes the same point. “40% of developed operating theaters are closed due to lack of nursing staff and doctors, mainly anesthetists. Waiting lists for surgeries exceed two years. There are many hospitals that still haven’t updated their surgery lists and there are patients from 2015 who no one knows if they are still waiting to be operated on,” emphasizes the president of POEDIN, Michalis Giannakos.
He disagrees “vehemently with the operation of paid evening surgeries for which patients will put their hand in their pocket and increase the barriers of citizens’ access to hospitals. If the government wants to reduce the lists of operating rooms and not to suffer the citizens, it should hire nurses and doctors, in order to operate all the developed operating rooms.
The remaining nursing and medical staff are working in conditions of work burnout and it is impossible for them to be able to respond safely to additional duties, even for payment.”
