Wards with 120 or 150 patients delivered to a single doctor, “ungrateful statements from those responsible” and cases of “burnout” are some of the complaints from Internal Medicine interns who wrote to the guardianship demanding working conditions.
There is no shortage of doctors. But the doctors can’t take it anymore,” says Sara Pereira, a fifth-year intern at the Pedro Hispano Hospital, municipality of Matosinhos, and one of the signatories of the letter that was delivered to the Ministry of Health on August 19, in which, initially 416 and now 482 Internal Medicine interns report their unavailability to perform more than 150 overtime hours per year.
They also warn that, taking into account the work demands, they consider that training “is compromised”, since they are constantly ensuring emergency scales, “dividing into shifts that should be guaranteed by specialists”.
“What does the minister need? [da Saúde, Marta Temido] understand is that people are needed to work and we are not capable of doing it alone. Neither specialists nor interns. We were not able to secure the emergency services, or internment, to investigation…”, believes an inmate from Matosinhos who talks to the journalists along with colleagues who, with the forum, discuss the situation as a bastonário to the Ordem dos Médicos, a meeting that was decorated in the port.
Sara Pereira says that the country’s Internal Medicine interns “don’t want to pat the window anymore, they want to be respected,” and she refuses to go into details when asked if the inventive economic measures announced by the guardianship reached her finish. please the class or not.
We are in the last quarter of the year. Many of us have already arrived [o número de] extra hours [expresso na lei] long ago. What we want to do is make the situation very clear: we are not available to agree to this. We need serious measures,” he says.
This is the case of Catarina Camarneiro, a second-year intern at the Central Hospital of Figueira da Foz. “I already exceeded 150 overtime hours a few months ago. I’m almost at 300 ”, she replies to journalists.
Catarina Camarneiro says she knows cases of colleagues who have already abandoned medicine and others who do not even consider, apart from their specialty, joining the National Health Service and joins Sara Pereira to claim access to training and other tasks that do not “ fill”. gaps” in the emergency service”.
“Emergencies is a fifth of the training in Internal Medicine. We have consultation, internment, investigation and consulting. I spend more time in the ER, which is only a fifth,” he explains.
Training is lacking for these Internal Medicine interns, as well as the minimum safety conditions for users.
They report cases of “burnout” and rooms with 120 to 150 beds delivered to an inmate, a group of doctors that this morning the president of the Ordem dos Médicos, Miguel Guimarães, considered that they cannot continue to be seen as “slaves of the system” .
Pedro Maia Neves, a third-year intern at the Santo António Hospital in Porto, goes further and denounces: “We are doing tasks that should not be ours. We are compared to specialists without being one”.
For Pedro Maia Neves, the “yes for the love of the shirt” said “with great pride” in the years of the Covid-19 pandemic “is not acceptable forever”.
The change that needs to be made is being forgotten. We have to think about how to make these races attractive. Our focus is to work with the populations”, he concludes.
This meeting tomorrow will result in a summary that will be delivered “in principle” on Tuesday to the Minister of Health.
According to the Ordem dos Médicos, the total number of Internal Medicine interns who adhered to the letter sent to Marta Temido corresponds to “almost 50% of the interns” in the country, which are 1,061.
Source: Observadora
