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Antonio Resines, who knows something about spending time in an ICU, recently made some statements that went viral: “There is a very serious problem (…) a lot of people are in a precarious situation (…) nobody has permanent contracts. But people who have been working in the same hospital for 20 years and people of an amazing level. At public health you need an injection of money, and there is money. And if there is not, they should remove it from other sites, because it is essential”.
They corroborate it in the ICU of the Guadalajara hospital, where he describes an "unsustainable" work situation, in which the pandemic "has simply been the last straw that has filled the camel's back." "We work with a great pressure on care, in conditions that are maintained and that are not suitable for the patient," summarizes an employee who prefers to remain anonymous.
Before the coronavirus, the Guadalajara ICU had ten beds for a province with more than 260.000 inhabitants. However, in the worst moments of the pandemic, hospital management will find that they have had 42 critical cases and the plant has gone from 23 to 90 cases.
“The ICU requires professional staff who know how to handle a critical patient and the staff, in a large percentage, is not experienced. The problem of Nursing is that the specialties do not coincide. Just as in Medicine we are clear that an ophthalmologist cannot act as a pediatrician, in Nursing the unions do not fight for this specialization”, explains this worker.
And what was an emergency solution has been perpetuated: "The patches that were used to deal with the pandemic in the first waves have been normalized." In the management, meanwhile, they refer to the fact that in the province there have been "six very marked waves", that "training has been carried out at different times" and that "they have tried to ensure that the personnel who have relocated for the different waves have experience in the ICU.
The Guadalajara hospital is 40 years old and the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha is "perfectly aware of the need to provide the ICU with more surface area and new spaces". The regional president, Emiliano García-Page, assured that the transfer to the new hospital would begin on April 23, but this has not been the case.
The management published a statement in which it blamed not meeting the deadlines due to the supply crisis due to the war in Ukraine and the legal challenges of companies that aspire to public tenders for the supply of equipment. And since then no new date has been given. Health professionals are unaware of any information about it: "We know what we hear in the media." In return, the management stated that "they have tried to always go hand in hand" and that everyone who has wanted to "has been invited" to "a visit".
Eventual contracts
What does not seem to change are temporary contracts, a common practice of the Public Administration, which renews them without the worker enjoying vacation periods. The ABC source says that it has already signed nine since March 2020. “It is totally legal if they add the tagline 'due to service needs' or because it is 'an exceptional situation'. But why is there a need for service? Because the templates are decimated, because we always go to the limit of work ”, he exposes. The management argued that the "chaining of contracts" is "really positive", since "although the pressure has decreased, it continued to rely on the professionals".
It should be noted that critically ill patients with coronavirus have decreased and, despite this, the level of assistance "has warned a lot." “I don't know if it's because Primary Care is saturated, patients arrive very ill. And that is something that we did not see before, ”says who sees it in the first person.
Finally, there are also "many partners" in psychological care. “And then he receives it, but they keep pressuring you and they call you on days off to go to work because there is no staff. I can assume this the first year, but we are going for the third summer of the pandemic, ”she lamented. Management denies this, citing the program to address the mental impact of covid on both professionals and patients and families. And, above all, it emphasizes that "under no circumstances is the professional forced" to work on his days off.
