Government opens the door to limiting vacations for emergency professionals this winter
The Government will order hospitals to reorganize during the winter holidays, in order to ensure emergency services. When there are failures in the team taking into account the rest days already scheduled, there must be changes, determines the Ministry of Health.
Information about the need to adapt vacations for healthcare professionals was provided this Saturday, September 21st, by Público, with the Ministry of Health confirming that the order with this indication “is ready for publication”. The same was said to Express.
Público writes that those responsible for Local Health Units must “immediately re-analyze the vacation plans of professionals who are part of the emergency service teams”. When there is a situation that “makes the full composition of the team unfeasible, it will be necessary to carry out the respective review”.
The objective is to “prevent and minimize the impacts arising from the increase in demand for healthcare that is expected to occur”, says the order, cited by the newspaper. Winter is usually marked by greater attendance at emergencies, largely due to respiratory infections, and the Government tries to avoid a repetition of failures in the NHS that occurred in the summer (and which is a repetition every winter).
Recently, there were five reports from IGAS – General Inspection of Health Activities – which pointed to poor holiday scheduling as a justification for failures in external emergencies in the area of gynecology/obstetrics, in the summer of 2022.
The Executive Directorate of the National Health Service had access to all emergency schedules until the end of August. The responsibility for reorganization to address gaps is now placed on those responsible for each health unit.
Minister and CEO had already warned
The Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, had already indicated that could give instructions to hospitals to pay attention to the organization of shifts. “Winter is a very difficult time, if summer is a time of great pressure, winter is a time of much greater and even more significant pressure”, said the government official on August 21, adding that it is in advance that she can understand “which scales need the most reinforcement”.
The winter health plan, in which emergency schedules are a priority, has already been presented, and António Gandra d’Almeida, executive director of the SNS, at the Expressin an interview in August, had already assumed its importance, to avoid holes in the scales: “I’ve spent many New Year’s Eves, many Christmases working. It is what it is, it costs everyone. There has to be an effort and there is. It has to be prepared in time and the scales have already been requested, the limitations until the end of the year, to know how the scales will go”.
The emergency schedules requested cover the period between October 1st and April 30th, but Público writes that the periods from December 23rd to 27th and from December 30th to January 3rd are those for which greater attention is required. The days before the November 1st holiday are also mentioned.
