Patient with treatment suspended due to lack of nurses at the IPO
A patient at the IPO in Lisbon had her chemotherapy treatment suspended in the last two weeks due to a lack of nurses, denounced a family member, but the institution guaranteed, this Friday, that competitions are available to hire more professionals.
“She has been without treatment for two weeks now” and with no prediction of when it will be resumed, told Lusa Luana Cunha, daughter of the 62-year-old patient who has been followed at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology (IPO) in Lisbon for about eight. months.
The IPO “had no forecast of when the situation would return to normal and, as such, it had no way of informing me when the treatments will be resumed”, said Luana Cunha, who also guaranteed that she had formally complained about this situation twice, without getting an answer yet .
She also added that she was informed by a head nurse that the suspension of chemotherapy treatments was due to the fact that “there were not enough nurses” and that, since July, she began to “perceive an intermittence in relation to the regularity of treatments, with a difficulty largest number of schedules”.
In response to Lusa, the Lisbon IPO admits that it is in the “public domain the need to increase the human resources of the Francisco Gentil Lisbon IPO, and other public health requirements, in some professional groups, such as nurses, with inevitable consequences on meeting certain deadlines for carrying out treatments”.
The institution also ensured that several processes are underway to recruit staff, including nurses, without specifying how many will be hired, “made possible by possible government authorizations and by the completion of nursing courses that included delays due to the pandemic” of covid – 19
“Trying to fill the gaps, the professionals of IPO Lisboa make great efforts every day and have guaranteed the activity of services and ensured the treatment of cancer patients who have the load, with the required quality and safety”, said the health unit.
According to the institution, the IPO has about two thousand workers – of which around 360 are doctors, more than 590 nurses and 190 diagnostic and therapeutic technicians – who treat patients in the regions of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, Alentejo, Algarve, Azores, Alentejo, Algarve, Azores, Madeira and also from Portuguese-speaking African Countries. Each year, around 14 thousand new users are assisted and more than 57 thousand patients are being treated and monitored, with approximately 36 thousand sessions being carried out. chemotherapy and more than 81,000 radiotherapy procedures.