The saturation of emergency services has become a classic of pandemic waves, with hospitals without physical space and without hands to care for the avalanche of patients. Currently the situation is serious, to the point that one of the large hospitals in Barcelona one day last week ordered the Servei d'Emergències Mèdiques de Catalunya (SEM) not to send more ambulances to the center, which could not supply it, union sources explain. In this hospital, and it is beginning to be a common phenomenon, significant concentrations of ambulances have been observed immobilized due to the delay in caring for the sick.
“The ambulance team is responsible for the patient and cannot leave while the patient is in an emergency corridor without having been attended to,” explains the president of the hospital's works council, José Manuel Sancho. Since care is usually delayed, medical care vehicles remain detained, without the possibility of attending to other emergencies. These days in the Sea there have been 9 detained ambulances, says Sancho.
This hospital has peaks of more than 190 emergencies, more than double what is desirable for its capacity. But it is not an exception. Others have sacrificed hospital beds to dedicate them to urgent care. Everyone has contingency plans in place, but the queues persist. And ambulance delays are becoming more common, confirms an EMS emergency health technician. “Many times we have to be next to the patient in a waiting room or in a hallway, we cannot leave until they are triaged and cared for,” says the driver of one of the more than 400 urgent transport ambulances in Catalonia. Vehicle detentions cause delays in new demands. “It's a fish that bites its tail,” he says.
In Sancho's opinion, given that the problems recur every winter, they are a consequence of disinterest and lack of investment on the part of the administrations. Users pay the price, but so do professionals: “Staff are exhausted, they cannot work properly, then they become stressed and sick leave occurs, which cannot be covered due to lack of staff and budget.” Leaves, due to illness or exhaustion, increase the number of emergencies.
The Minister of Health, Mónica García, advocated yesterday to start working as soon as possible on the prevention and planning of respiratory virus epidemics for the next season. Meanwhile, the ministry yesterday issued the order imposing the mandatory use of masks in all primary care centers and Spanish hospitals, estimating that it may take several weeks for the flu epidemic curve to decline again. and that “due to the intense circulation, the impact on the health of the population can be high.”
The order recommends the mask in pharmacies and residences. Likewise, it allows the autonomous communities to eliminate the obligation (in health centers) due to the recommendation as long as they register a minimum of two weeks of decrease in the contagion curve for respiratory infections. Health does not mention self-justified sick leave to exempt doctors from bureaucratic work, although the minister was in favor of adopting it in the future.
