Lucas Jackson / reuters
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“We have our hands tied” says Rinaldo Missaglia, national secretary of Simpef, the Union of pediatricians, worried about the situation that professionals and parents risk having to face with the first school reopening. “The rules are inadequate and will increasingly cause frustration for us professionals, of profound discomfort for parents at risk of losing many days of work”.
With the inevitable increase in the classic manifestations of seasonal flu, family doctors find themselves in difficulty and have put their doubts in writing in some documents forwarded by the union to the Minister of Health and the leaders of Lombard health, the region that symbolizes the pandemic. They also ask for greater involvement in decisions, “so far seriously lacking”, as the representatives of the Simpef say.
As the pediatricians point out, the first problems are already occurring now. “In these days, the request for assistance for flu-like symptoms is increasing, as per seasonal epidemiology and the rule that prevents the pediatrician from visiting the patient at his office and having to subject him to isolation, for himself and for his own family members, is often a cause for dispute in the doctor / patient relationship (ie the parents) ”, write Missaglia and Ezio Finazzi, Simpef’s regional secretary, to Giulio Gallera, Lombard councilor for Welfare.
According to the operational indications deriving from regional resolutions, from the documents of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and from the proposals of the ministries concerned, when a patient communicates flu symptoms over the telephone, the pediatrician must necessarily monitor him remotely and impose home isolation. He must then notify the dedicated portals of the suspected case and request that the swab be done, pending the outcome of which the patient must respect the isolation and impose it on any cohabitants. Parents would therefore risk being forced to take time off work.
“Another substantially inapplicable rule – continues the document sent to Gallera – is that concerning the health status certifications for access to or return to school communities, as well as the attestations of compliance with the anti Covid procedures by the parent, which family pediatricians should release to their patients “. The issue of these certificates is in fact at risk of non-compliance with the medico-legal regulations to which every professional must refer. For the Simpef the problem is that, “in the absence of diagnostic tools that allow us to affirm in science and conscience the absence of contagiousness of the subject”, the required certification cannot be issued according to ethically correct practice. “For all of this, and for more, it seems essential to rethink the rules currently in force”.
This is the request, and as the document emphasizes, there is still “little time to remedy the distortions that could have, as well as a deleterious deterioration in the relationship of trust between pediatricians, their patients and their families, an unacceptable impact on social conditions and economic and of the entire community “.
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