Fourteen hours of waiting in the emergency room for a fractured pelvis.
Having fallen on his bicycle in Via Pasquale Paoli (due to a hole in the asphalt for which he will ask the Municipality for damages) a 44-year-old citizen of Como was transported around nine in the morning by ambulance to Sant’Anna. However, there was a queue in the emergency department and after the first evaluation in triage a lot of patience was needed.
«I rushed to the hospital to help my son-in-law, the one who had the accident – he says Mario Tagliabuea general practitioner in Como for 44 years – for hours and hours, except for the nursing evaluation, he was not seen by any specialist. However, the fall was serious, as was the pain he felt. In fact, at eleven o’clock at night, after the x-ray, he was diagnosed with a fractured pelvis. A serious event, for which greater attention would have been necessary. My son-in-law resisted well all day given his young age, but I wonder what would have happened to the many elderly people who crowd the emergency room with such a long wait for such an urgent need for care».
Tagliabue, as a doctor, is keen to denounce the critical situation he sees in the emergency room, with many people forced to wait in an environment that is “even dirty and dilapidated”. “Poor healthcare workers who have to work in similar conditions.” Thanks go to the doctors and nurses we met, overwhelmed by the many requests for help. The people of Como know that the main emergency room in the province is overworked. In 2023, there were 38,898 accesses to the general emergency room of Sant’Anna alone, a number that does not include the data for the pediatric emergency room and the gynecological emergency room. Here the average waiting time was 9.14 hours, for patients over 80 14.5. Worse for people who were then hospitalized: 12.5 hours of average waiting time and 19.5 for those over 80. The influx has actually dropped compared to before the pandemic, yet the queues have gotten longer.
For Asst Lariana a crucial point is the appropriateness of accesses, too many, about 70%, are minor codes, therefore they are minor and non-urgent care needs. All needs that should find an answer in the territory in primary care, with the clinics that however on weekends and in the evenings are closed and with the medical guards seriously understaffed.
Suffice it to say that in the latest regional announcement, the vacant positions in the territory covered by Asst Lariana for general practitioners are still 107, out of about 300 compared to the correct number of population to be assisted. The hope is that new specialists will arrive, but the human resources in the entire healthcare sector are few. They are not enough to respond to the growing needs of a citizenry that is increasingly aging and that statistically suffers from a greater number of chronic diseases. And in any case, Asst reminds that in the Emergency Room, the most serious cases always have priority: “The commitment of all the staff to limit the inconvenience is maximum, but on days of overcrowding and with numerous diagnostic tests to be performed, unfortunately, waits can occur”.
