“In America, rich people are in fashion. Here men and women exist, binaries do not exist.” “Everyone in there, in the crematorium in Cava di Tirreni and we solved the problem.” These are just some of the sentences pronounced by Carmine Alfano, director of the School of Specialization in Plastic Surgery at the University of Salerno, inside the San Giovanni di Dio and Ruggi d’Aragona hospital. Homophobic insults, but also sexist jokes, recorded directly by the interns who wanted to show the unprofessional and indeed threatening climate in which they were forced to work. The incidents were reported by the Association of Free Specialists (Als), who reported the facts to L’Espresso. Alfano, among other things, is running for mayor in Torre Annunziata with the centre-right and would have asked the same white coats for help in the electoral campaign.
In a video, Alfano defended himself, defining those words as episodes of “goliardy”.
Dozens of audios in which Alfano repeatedly expresses himself with fury towards homosexuals. “That one is rich, that other one is rich, they are all rich even on television and they all want important positions.” Or, speaking of a resident who would like to move from Urology to Plastic Surgery: “But he’s gay!”, and then adding: “And if he’s rich, urology is fine.” And again: “Here we are missing a category, if I may, after this has also entered, we are missing the whores, then ‘hold on to everyone'”. The audio relating to gender discrimination are just the tip of the iceberg .
According to their story, the residents go to Alfano’s office every morning for a daily meeting. However, “the organization of the department and the management of patients are secondary to the professor’s monologues, which often translate into insults and shouting towards us. In fact, we residents are almost daily harassed and threatened with offensive names and vulgar exclamations. We are forced to suffer in silence and listen to sexist and homophobic jokes, creating a toxic and humiliating work environment”. There are two ways in which Alfano threatens them: “By suspending the holidays to which we are entitled or by preventing us from accessing the operating room. In addition to undermining our dignity and our psychological well-being, this also hinders our professional training and also highlights a serious abuse of power by the director. This intolerable situation requires immediate intervention.”
Demeaning insults, such as “You’re a bunch of idiots”, “I’ll put you in a position to destroy yourselves”, “I’ll kick you out of school. I’ll kick their asses at the right moment”, “I’ll crush you in everyone’s bodies”, “99% of you will do nothing in life except be a shampoo maker.”
From the interns’ story, poor management of the facility also emerges. For example, there are insufficient numbers of operating rooms, which prevents the proper training of a plastic surgeon. “The quality control of specialization schools – explains Massimo Minerva, president of Als – is institutionally the responsibility of an inter-ministerial body: the National Observatory of Specialist Medical Training”. The ministries have the obligation to appoint their members: “Out of 16 members, the number of university students foreseen by the decree is three, chosen from the Deans of Medicine and Surgery. In reality, this number, due to the choices of the ministries, is eight The universities, therefore, perform the dual function of controlled and controllers: these are the results. The previous Observatory expired on 31 October, but the new Observatory was appointed only a few days ago, almost nine months late of the professors appointed in the new Observatory is the head of a specialization school with a record of dropouts. These choices give an idea of the quality that the new Observatory will aim for”, which took office yesterday, 18 June, for the first time.
“Over the last three years – continues the story of the specialists – only one abdominoplasty has been performed, while the majority of the operations consist of direct closures or small grafts, therefore minor surgery. Furthermore, the 40% rate from first to operator in minor surgery interventions for each individual trainee. Thus training is not guaranteed”.
None of them want to be close to Alfano, given the threats and mockery. “Here someone thinks they can fly very high, here you are in trouble, you are nothing, what you are today you are because I made you do it”, some of his words. Or: “Starting with winning scholarships and if you know how to put a stop to it. You are my failure, failure, do you know what that means?”. “You are nothing. And since I have been self-flagellated for a week, and since yesterday I haven’t given myself peace, from this moment on you are no longer in the operating room, you don’t do anything in the ward. Nothing, nothing.”
Among the most disturbing audios is that of a dialogue about a patient that Alfano cares a lot about: “This one is a friend of mine and if his daughter has a complication, he doesn’t call the magistrate. He brings Sila over to us to you and me, he attacks the plant near us and makes us stay naked for a week and no one finds out about it”. Finally, there is no shortage of insults to the institutions: “If you continue like this, without telling you anything, I will have you removed from all the commissions I have put you on, I will have you removed from everything. You can speak to the principal, the rector, the minister, I’m the one in charge in here, you can call Mattarella and he’ll screw me over, understand, so for now you’re not doing any upgrades, if you want to continue like this, my advice is get organized and find a hospital place, because here in between? You won’t find any place for a year and a half, and I won’t have any qualms.”
As regards his candidacy for mayor of Torre Annunziata, Alfano had asked the interns for help: “So guys, 99.9% of me am a candidate. I asked some of your colleagues in the afternoon to give me a hand with the organisation” , you hear in an audio. “Now, I’ll give you an example, if one of the residents has to come with me in the afternoon at two o’clock, and it’s continuity of care, I will ask each of you in the first year in rotation to do that coverage. Is that clear? It’s a sacrifice that will then I’ll let you recover.” In concrete terms, the interns had to cover the shifts of those involved in the electoral campaign and were forced to “fill in a format in which there was a political poll, flagging the professor’s name and surname”.
The rector of the University of Salerno, Vincenzo Loia, was not aware of all this. “To date, no reports have been received in the University. However, I have started the necessary internal checks, given the seriousness of the facts reported.”
