Doctors warn: When the healthcare system collapses, living in Slovakia will be life-threatening – Regions – News
Exhaustion and long-term failure to solve problems pushed doctors to a radical step – mass dismissals. They are so close that if nothing changes, our country will become unusual. Their voices calling for help are said to be ignored by the competent authorities.
photo: Eva Štenclová, The truth
Doctors who resigned met the head of state.
The President recently met with the management of the Roosevelt Hospital in Banská Bystrica and with the doctors who resigned there. “I am here because of the current situation in the health sector. Even in this hospital, approximately thirty percent of the doctors gave their statements,” Čaputová recalled. This is approximately 130 of the total number of 430 doctors.
The system is collapsing
Doctor Eva Košíková works at the Roosevelt Hospital in the clinic of anesthesiology and intensive care medicine, where she is the deputy head of the transplant program. He has seventeen years of experience behind him and openly says that he can no longer rule. He is one of those who quit. “We have tried everything else and now we have reached for this crucial step. We don’t see any other way out,” she said. She clarified that this situation is not about what is happening specifically in their department. According to her, the Slovak healthcare system is failing as a system. “It is not on the verge of collapse, but it is already flying off the edge. We don’t feel that anyone perceives it and takes steps so that the fall is not so deep and hard,” she pointed out.
Košíková emphasized that the staff is particularly lacking. In addition to doctors in all positions – from graduates to experienced doctors, the most critical situation is with non-medical health workers. “Nurses, paramedics, paramedics, physical therapists,” she listed. It is said to apply to all trade unions. She emphasized that they need educated, erudite, experienced people who can work, while not on the verge of strength and despair. I can feel it on myself too. “I am exhausted and I see the health system collapsing around me. I come into contact with patients who did not receive sufficient care on time because there is too much work for too few people,” she explained.
The doctor continued that the steps to be taken by the systems and listed them in their demands, from the payment method of hospitals to the setting of education, are failing. “We don’t feel that the partners in the discussion, who are supposed to change this in their competences, perceive the urgency of our voices. The only way we have come up with to make the urgency sound is to file a statement,” she added. Immediately she mentioned the cruel future that could arise from all this.
“When our healthcare system collapses, living in Slovakia will be dangerous for everyone. We are not fighting for ourselves at this time. All doctors, as people who perceive from the front line and see the collapsing system, we cry out for help to our patients,” he says. She is convinced that if no changes are made, which should have been done a long time ago, Slovakia will become an unusual country.
They have no one to operate with
Juraj Ábelovský from the maxillofacial surgery department is among the doctors who resigned. “I have been working for eight years in a state of health, and the state is getting significantly worse. Unfortunately, we can no longer pretend that our work is sufficient to ensure health care for all patients,” he explained his move.
“It’s not about us, it’s about our nurses, who we usually work without,” she says. He claims that the whole thing became more difficult after the covid period, when many doctors, but especially nurses, left. In Roosevelt Hospital, for example, there is a lack of female instrument technicians, who are an essential part of the surgical operation team, not half of their total number have left. Despite the fact that they have the equipment and know how to operate on patients, there is no one to assist them.
The director of the Roosevelt Hospital, Miriam Lapuníková, says that emotions in society are extremely high, which is also reflected in the fact related to the doctors’ statements. “They are elite and that status rightfully belongs to them. This is their expression of feelings that have been accumulated over the years. Now they have decided to make it known that a change in the process throughout the health care industry is necessary,” she said. At the same time, she confirmed that if the resignations are fulfilled, it will have a fundamental impact on ensuring the real functioning and smooth operation of not only their hospital.
When asked if they have a crisis plan, Lapuníková responded that they need to communicate with the ministry in relation to you. “Of course, we will be able to provide for an acute patient, that is, one who is brought in in critical condition. However, I want to believe that there will be an agreement between the individual actors. It must be solved at the highest political level,” she noted.
At the moment, approximately fourteen doctors are missing from Roosevelt Hospital, which, according to Lapuníková, is not the worst. However, it is very bad within the middle medical staff. “If we had two buses full of nurses, approximately up to eighty, we would be very pleased,” she added.