TUSCANY – «For years now, healthcare workers (doctors, nurses, health workers, technicians, etc.) have been working tirelessly and under constant pressure. First Covid with its workload and fears that profoundly affected many operators, then victims of the rhetoric of heroes, now forgotten in a forgetful and often ungrateful country. Then the post-covid pressure, the backlog of workload, the endless waiting lists to recover: exam visits, surgeries… and the healthcare workers, always there, always the same and increasingly counted, started yet another battle . They worked with their heads down, in summer and winter, day and night, as many women and men in the healthcare system know how to do.” The FP Cgil Toscana with Bruno Pacini and Pasquale D’Onofrio intervenes to denounce the “excessive workloads” for healthcare personnel in our region and to ask for new hires and increases in healthcare spending.
«There would be a need for new hires in Tuscany as elsewhere – highlight the two trade unionists – but the funding of the NHS is increasingly limited, it is now moving towards 6.2% of the GDP, more than one point below the European average of 7, 4. In the end, it is precisely the most exposed workers who pay the highest price for an unfair tax system in which real wealth is never taxed, in which unbearable tax evasion of almost 100 billion a year is tolerated. A disgrace for many underpaid workers due to the decline in purchasing power, the only country in Europe in the last 30 years. Not to mention the massacre of white deaths that occurred in healthcare and as happens everywhere every day. But to stay in our homeland, Tuscany is today at the top of the national LEA rankings (among the top three regions adding prevention, hospital and district activity). It excels in the outcomes of time-dependent networks for Myocardial Infarction, Stroke, Trauma (Agenas). It recorded among the best national performances in terms of increase in visits, diagnostic tests and surgical interventions. Of the 235 2023 ESM indicators, approximately two-thirds have improved or stable. Of course, it has not yet solved the problem of the weakness of the territorial network which compromises the overall reputation of the SS. And it still has to work on better articulating the mission of the hospital system in a logic that puts health needs, the safety of care and the correct distribution of care loads at the centre. Just as it must work on the prescriptive appropriateness of visits and tests, to be protected from the lucrative phenomena of private healthcare consumerism, rebuilding the relationship of trust between the patient and the family doctor who must work in concert with the specialists of public structures. But there is no doubt that the results obtained so far are mainly the result of the daily work of the women and men of the Tuscan Healthcare System. Workers who today pay a high price, as demonstrated by the fact that absences due to illness have increased, reaching an unprecedented percentage of 14% with an increase of 3% in almost all companies in Tuscany (Mes 2023)”.
«There is therefore a major issue in healthcare today: how to safeguard and protect the people who treat others? The workers who are the greatest asset of the SS. How do political, managerial and management levels intend to tackle the problem of excessive workload which generates work-related stress and widespread burnout phenomena today? The answer for us is to take care of it, humanize relationships in companies, reconcile work and life times, hire where needed, reorganize fairly and let people breathe. It serves to increase workers’ sense of belonging and trust, crucial factors for increasing their ability to respond to healthcare needs. Adapt the workforce to the volumes of activity, guarantee at least turnover and replacements for maternity and long illnesses for example. And again, in the summer many patients postpone non-urgent operations, in the same season schools and factories close. Where there are evident reductions in flows, adequate holiday periods must be guaranteed to spend time with families. Otherwise, resentment grows towards a system that does not understand workers’ problems and certainly does not improve their productivity. You have to work when you have to work and rest when you have to rest, always guaranteeing all the necessary services. A harmonious system that does not impose but shares and inspires a vision that becomes everyone’s mission. If dehumanization in working relationships is added to staff shortages, burdened by lack of replacements, the heavy climate that exists in many companies and the flight towards other realities or other countries are generated. Furthermore, considering that wages are among the lowest in Europe. Nor can we think that the answer lies in additional services, piece work that falls on the usual staff who are already suffering. For this reason we will implement every action to monitor the phenomenon and the solutions that individual companies want to implement in reconciling life and work times and ensuring adequate responses to citizens”.
