Nuoro “To add insult to injury” one might say after the communications sent a few days ago by the management of the Brotzu hospital in Cagliari and the city’s University Hospital, to Areus, to the local health authorities but above all to the new regional health councilor Armando Bartolazzi, to highlight the critical issues due to the exhaustion of beds in the hospital units of the capital. The serious situation affecting the departments of Arnas and Aou, unable to accommodate other patients, has led the general director Agnese Foddisand followed by the health director Aou, Cinzia Aresuto denounce the problem and ask for “collaboration to guarantee the best possible assistance to patients”.
The reaction The tenor of the communications, in light of the difficult reality of the Nuoro healthcare system which has witnessed over the years a veritable diaspora of doctors towards the health centers of Cagliari and Sassari, could not help but arouse concern and at the same time a certain “annoyance” in the Barbagia healthcare staff, forced to work grueling shifts. «For years we have been working with reduced ranks – say the operators – precisely because many colleagues have chosen to move to other locations, from where we are now told that the beds are sold out. And to think – they add – that entire departments of San Francesco have been left without doctors, and for this reason the few remaining are forced to continually jump through hoops to guarantee service to citizens. There is no department that is fully staffed – they underline – and the operators on duty still have to balance shifts and working hours to be able to manage an ever-increasing number of patients”. A chronic emergency which, as the president of the Nuoro medical association explains, Mary Job, differs from the others if only because at the university hospital level there is a new force which is also represented by the residents. It is true that someone can be hired in a hospital setting, according to this new regulation, but it is equally true that the force majeure remains in university centres. It is clear that if the facilities are suffering more due to a lack of staff, they are asking for help so that many patients, out of necessity, are transferred to the north and south poles of the island for certain treatments. For example, in the case of Interventional Radiology for stroke, here in Nuoro the service barely works H6 (6 hours ed), while previously, when medical, technical and nursing staff were sufficient to cover shifts, it was 24 hours a day. Now assistance is only guaranteed for one shift. Same situation in the Orthopedics department, effectively closed, where an outpatient type service is practically guaranteed. So if a patient needs orthopedic treatment, it is necessary to transfer him to another hospital. It’s the matter of communicating vessels – continues Giobbe – according to which if I can’t guarantee something, the transfer takes place to ensure the healthcare that is needed”.
The numbers The battles and complaints carried out so far have not been enough, however, to stop the continuous cuts that have stripped the San Francesco hospital, where every day is a struggle to be able to guarantee assistance to the sick, even in moments of greatest overcrowding, when the number of beds is limited.
The crisis is in all departments: from Pediatrics which has 7 doctors instead of 13, as many as are expected on staff, to Medicine, Geriatrics and Infectious Diseases, where healthcare personnel have always been insufficient to manage the ever-increasing number of patients. They are not doing any better in the emergency rooms where there are 5 doctors left compared to the staffing plan which provides for 18. Oncology then travels with only two oncologists plus the director.
«The thing we need to start from is that if there weren’t these doctors who do the profession to the fullest, it would really be a problem. Doctors – underlines President Giobbe – forced to withstand the physical and psychological stress that certain situations impose. We live on thin ice. We need to act quickly because the situation is an emergency, and if we don’t move we will witness the total collapse of San Francesco. Given today’s anniversary (yesterday for those reading ed), we hope for another “liberation”: that of the healthcare system of our hospital, which is dramatically impoverished in resources.”
Cocco’s appeal And just yesterday, a few hours after the institutional visit of the President of the Region Alessandra Todde, the complaint from the regional councilor arrived Sebastian Cocco, for yet another attempted “snatch” against the Nuoro healthcare system. «The hospital’s Pneumology department Cesare Zonchello, already understaffed with 4 doctors out of 10 expected, risks having another unit taken away due to the sliding of the ranking in favor of Aou of Sassari which already boasts the presence of 22 operators – writes Cocco in a letter addressed to the president and to the Councilor Bartolazzi, trusting in their immediate intervention –. An unjustified inequality that needs to be addressed immediately. With only three units, the management of a department with 26 beds is compromised, as well as emergencies related to respiratory diseases, including childhood ones, in a vast area.”
