The heads of the Internal Medicine team and the director of the Emergency Department at Cascais Hospital resigned today, the president of the National Federation of Doctors (Fnam) confirmed to Lusa.
“All the heads of the Internal Medicine team, the director of the Emergency Department and the head of the Counter have resigned,” said Joana Bordalo e Sá.
The union leader’s testimony comes after CNN Portugal reported this afternoon that the heads of the Internal Medicine team and the Hospital Assistants who work as desk managers at Cascais Hospital had resigned en bloc in a letter sent to the board of directors.
“What they [doctors] are going through there is a very difficult, very dramatic situation. Cascais Hospital (…) has doctors who have only worked in the emergency room for three years. They do a lot of nights – always 12 hours – it makes the work very heavy and this doesn’t guarantee treatability,” he said.
“It’s a problem that doesn’t have to do with the 150 [extra] hours. It’s a chronic problem. Given the huge influx, colleagues are absolutely exhausted, they can’t take it,” he added.
According to the letter, to which CNN Portugal has had access, the resigning clinicians claim that “the quality of the care provided and the safety of patients are at stake” at the hospital, which is run under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.
The signatories point out that the “doctor-patient ratio” in the Observation Service is higher than the limits set out in the regulations, highlighting that they have seen a “progressive deterioration” in the safety conditions of patients admitted to the General Emergency Service.
In a statement sent to the press, the administration of Cascais Hospital acknowledged that there was “some discontent among its health professionals”, arguing that the “influx of emergency services has contributed to an overload”.
The hospital also justifies that it was the only one in the “Lisbon region never to have closed, which has consequent implications”.
However, the hospital “reiterates its total commitment to the healthcare provided to the population it serves by keeping its emergency rooms open (adults, gynecology-obstetrics and pediatrics)”.
“We must inform you that the administration of Cascais Hospital, together with the competent authorities, remains firmly committed to finding solutions that minimize the impacts of the pressures facing the National Health System as a whole,” he said.
