Cuneo – I Piedmontese doctors are thinking of abandoning public healthcare: 35% of the doctors who are today in the wards of our hospitals want to leave the public.
And many have already done so, 330 in 2022 alone the official figure and it seems there are even more in this 2023 which has just ended.
Announcements and guarantees of protection are not enough, doctors in the public sector are no longer well and are thinking of leaving due to pension cuts, but above all excessive workloads, unsatisfactory remuneration and the sirens of the private sector and abroad.
This was revealed by the survey conducted by Fadoi, the Federation of Hospital Internists published at the end of the year. And to reinforce the data of discontent revealed by the survey there is also the joint declaration, released at the end of the year after the meeting with the Region, by the regional secretaries of the two major medical unions, Chiara Rivetti of Anaao Assomed Piemonte and the Alba Sebastiano Cavalli of the Cimo-Fesmed Piedmont Federation.
“We have been waiting since July for the meeting with the Region (the regional observatory on hiring for medical and healthcare management which took place on 19 December, ed.) – write the two secretaries – which unfortunately proved useless. The Region has presented us with some data, some of which are interesting, but the data does not cover the Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve shift: doctors are needed. The fact that 480 hirings are established on paper, in this historical context of serious shortages, does not count. Are just words. We need to find specialists, which the local health authorities, despite announcing competitions, cannot find. The only hope is the residents but this Christmas gift, which we were waiting for so long, has not arrived. The doctors in specialist training hired so far are absolutely not enough, especially in specialties with greater shortages and in peripheral hospitals. We will meet again in January, but the fate of the regional health service is sealed: if hiring does not materialize urgently, many departments will have to close.”
A difficult situation for the Piedmontese healthcare system which risks losing more public personnel despite its efforts. Fadoi’s survey is a two-sided investigation, because on the one hand it presents a worrying scenario on public health, on the other it attests to the strong attachment of many doctors to the public service or to the universal right to health. The desire to leave public healthcare affects 35% of those doctors who are not close to retirement, even 33% if they could go back would no longer enroll in medicine and not only want to leave the public sector but healthcare itself and change profession. However, as many as 57% of doctors would never leave public healthcare out of “duty” towards all citizens, 16% think that the need for universal assistance comes before economic reasons, 13% consider the quality and completeness to be even higher of public hospitals compared to private ones and 14% because the public is still a guarantee.
The problems identified by the doctors are not in fact quality nor even the old structures of the Piedmontese hospitals, but are primarily the lack of doctors and nurses followed by the lack of valorisation of internal medicine doctors, the lack of beds and the poor integration with local services. To make up for the lack of doctors, colleagues ask (as many as 86%) for the use of specialists in the departments, the hiring of additional staff (51%), the reduction of inappropriate prescriptions (35%) and only 12 % believe that the problem is the organization and only 2% believe that better paid overtime can help the situation and reduce waiting lists. The indication of the survey is therefore clear but also the requests of the doctors and nurses and their unions, that is, we need more professionals in the ward, also more specialists and therefore more access guaranteed first to the Faculties of Medicine and then to the Specialization Schools.
2024-01-06 17:42:27
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