Hospital Atticon, morning (of any) weekday. The entrance to one of the main pathology wards is open (unlike others) and access is relatively free. In the long corridor outside the chambers, several auxiliary beds are lined up in a row.
One right after the other on any free wall. Not vacant ones of course, fully occupied by patients. Tables and tables occupy a few more square centimeters of the space to their left.
The images verify information that Vima had already gathered by talking to different sources in the hospital industry.
It is relatively quiet. Some are resting alone, others are talking quietly to each other about various things or are busy with their mobile phones to pass the time. The rest are treated by their attendants. The staff of the University Hospital in Haidari work non-stop trying to serve the increased needs that constantly arise.
Although the long-term polarization and the fierce dispute between the government and the opposition over the evening surgeries with the pre-determined monetary compensation have monopolized the conversation about Health, with fire from both sides either inside or outside the Parliament, the large nursing institutions, especially in Attica, work around the clock trying to ‘ deal with the increased number of care incidents for dozens of insured persons.
It is inevitable that the degree of difficulty in managing them will increase as long as the deficiencies are not covered and the gaps remain unfilled. The vibrant potential of the hospitals and the workers’ trade union bodies, with institutional or non-institutional initiatives, has occasionally highlighted the pain points of the system: the existing ranches that are installed outside the wards to serve the patients is one of them.
The root causes of an unsolved problem
The phenomenon is by no means current. However, it is a phenomenon that needs constant highlighting, but above all, an appropriate treatment in order to find a solution in the end. Especially since, according to successive testimonies of citizens, the increase of beds in the corridors has recently been so great that on the one hand it makes the work of doctors and nurses difficult and on the other hand it reduces the required care services for the sick.
Sources from the medical branch of the National Health Service analyzed in Vima what and how. The problem basically concerns the core hospitals that are called to receive a huge volume of cases on their days of duty (and not only), with the consequence that the next day patients are treated outside the rooms.
As executives who experience the situation from the inside explained to us, cutting through the shell and getting to the core of the problem, some of the main reasons why the system keeps “cramming” are:
- the management of certain cases by primary health care since patients are sent for admission and hospitalization who could have been adequately treated in Health Centers within Attica or in the Region. But hands are missing.
- EKAB does not easily enter into the process of second thoughts and, based on trust, chooses to automatically turn to large nursing institutions for the transport of patients who have called 166 and need treatment.
- the fact that some beds in wards must remain empty in order to be used for patients after planned surgeries, with the result that they are not available for new cases.
Which hospitals employ ranches
The Atticon is, admittedly, the most typical example, the magnifying glass of a weakened Health system, of this defective situation. In addition to being a university, so it includes all specialties, it serves the whole of western Attica. In other words, he is called to be constantly alert.
The George Gennimatas in the Mediterranean it follows closely. There, sometimes the stretcher cannot pass through the increased number of beds in the corridors, a hospital worker told Vima. It is these moments when despair trumps every other emotion, and in some circumstances it flattens dignity. Everyone, both staff and patients.
The photograph obtained by the Second Pathology Department of Building 2 with the rancho almost at floor level and the patient holding his head clearly captures the disappointing situation that prevails.
THE Annunciation and General State of Nice are other offshoots of the same overload regime. The Shismanoglio in Marousi it also closely completes the same list.
“For 24 hours on stretchers, not even on a ranch”
“The biggest case load in the hospitals of Athens is caused by the operational problems that too many hospitals in the Region have, as a result of which the volume of both emergency and regular cases has increased a lot” confesses to Vima, confirming the report, gen. secretariat of the Federation of Associations of Hospital Doctors of Greece Panos Papanikolaou.
According to the neurosurgeon, professor of Medicine and director of the NHS at the General Hospital of Nice, therefore with the same perception, “the even more unacceptable phenomenon is happening to keep patients twenty-four hours on stretchers, not even in a ranch, until they are transported to the departments.” As he pointed out the “core” of the problem is, undoubtedly, the understaffing of hospitals as a result causing, among other things, “a long delay in the movement of emergency cases from the Emergency Department to the clinics”.
What is the case in other hospitals?
On the contrary, such an image, with ranches lined up in a row, will not be found in smaller hospitals (Hippokrateio, Erythros Stavros, Sotiria, etc.). In these, the situation is much more controlled, admit people from the medical staff, and the handling is actually much more convenient.
After all, they do not offer all specialties and are on duty at the same time as other hospitals of the same dynamics, with the result that the required separation of each case is favored. And if there is a need for additional beds, they will arrange it relatively quickly.
“Overtime and underemployment”
Of course, one version does not negate the other, the prevailing one in the large hospitals of Attica. That is why Mr. Papanikolaou set as the only way out of the proliferation of the ranks the coverage of all vacancies concerning permanent qualified doctors and “right now it’s over 6000”. The equivalents in the rest of the hospital staff are “over 35,000”.
Unloading, according to him, would also offer “the strengthening and not the disintegration of primary care”, because he also pointed out that “some cases would not even need to come to the emergency departments of hospitals and add to the burden. For example, in the basin, many Health Centers should be on call 24 hours a day with the appropriate staffing so that some cases can be treated there if a serious problem has not been diagnosed”.
Otherwise, Gen. concluded. secretary of the Federation, “intensive overwork and underemployment will continue. In other words, when regional hospitals are given an order, as recently in the Rethymno hospital, by the commander, the pediatrician is to act as the pathologist. These are third-world situations that set medicine back decades.”
In other words, normality is sought. In order to celebrate World Health Day as it should on April 7th every year.
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