the waiting list for a consultation reaches the end of the month

Leto leaves the polyclinics with half of the medical staff, reaching a “collapse” situation in some parts of the city. He medical union warning that the scenario in primary care is “for the most part catastrophic. There are many replacements of doctors ahead, maternity leave, reduction of working hours, holidays … The waiting list is already dragging on for more than 14 days, and in some cases until the end of August there are no vacancies“.

Union spokesman Juan Benhumeda adds: “It is true that they are open for a few hours every day, but they close quickly. meetings become “emergency” need to be taken care of first. When you try to make an appointment with a doctor and the app warns you that the appointment is not possible, it is because the waiting period has exceeded 14 days.

Many users cannot (or do not want to) put off a consultation for so long, so they turn to community emergency rooms with their ailments. This assumes that there are doctors who pass consults more than 60 patients per dayas they have to deal with their agenda as well as the “extra” users of emergencies.

In medical centers staff has been halved and “there’s a bit of chaos because what’s not urgent becomes urgent.”

“The future is very dark and the impotence is enormous. It’s true that the area is trying to fill in some places. In fact, there were some “unique activities” last Monday and there weren’t many appointments. working conditions and wages are not attractive for professionals, and in some cases they even choose to remain unemployed before entering primary health care,” explains Benjumeda. “Unique Acts” are procedures in which jobs are offered to graduate doctors with the intention of keeping them in the public health system. The trend, according to the trade union, is towards a deterioration in service, as doctors are expected to retire towards the end of the year.

According to the Medical Union, some of the factors explaining the flight of public health professionals are temporary contracts, non-competitive salaries, tight schedules rotational shifts that do not allow reconciling work with family life, counterproductive incentive policies, and bureaucratic professional careers divorced from clinical practice.”