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Patients waiting seven hours for treatment in the emergency department of HUC
The nurse ensures that this is a specific situation caused by the flu, but the saturation is daily. Yesterday at noon and there were no stretchers or wheelchairs free, and all the halls of the service were occupied by patients who waited seven hours for treatment.
1:37 18/feb/11
Not enough staff or beds, or wheelchairs free and patients do not stop coming in emergency becoming a time bomb that could explode at any moment, especially since there are cases that can not be addressed until seven hours after reach. "Thus summarized yesterday by the representative of the Union of Nursing (SATs) in the Works of the Hospital Universitario de Canarias (HUC), Ram?n Pinto, the situation that is currently the Emergency Department.
"It is a timely event. It is one of those peaks that generally refers hospital management and attributable to influenza or the like, if so, instead of a peak and this would be a plateau, because saturation is daily, "Pinto said yesterday in support of" emergency personnel serving daily more than 250 people, although the maximum capacity is 180 "before confirming that there are only ten nurses per shift, plus the three or four who are from other services.
"Any person who has been in recent days to the Emergency HUC, or go soon, you will find that there are patients everywhere. The beds occupy each and every one of the corridors on either side from the entrance to the final. All the stalls are filled and the area for the control of nine patients monitored is 17. The so-called Ground Zero, to patients with influenza, is also full and that it is the path from the Emergency and ICU Rays . do not meet the minimum of attention and, however, has placed up a cabinet to take the medication on hand and fixed beds on both sides. And that is armed with patience because there are patients who fall and those who can not be serve up hours later, "he said.
And is that nurses' Emergency Department is a funnel, because it enters and leaves many people too little. "
In this sense, Ramon Pinto says that the transition from emergency to also plant "is delayed more than ever, because since it is a free bed instead of moving to occupy some emergency patients are calling everyone in list surgical waiting. "
However, to paint what is really worrying is the widespread lack of expertise in nursing.
"If there is no emergency beds or wheelchairs, the nurse on duty must be the engineer almost as if it were a tetris and make the patient who is best among all who are there, go on a stretcher to a chair. The problem is when there is enough nurses to care for all patients as they arrive, and it happens almost daily, "says the representative of workers HUC Nursing before recognizing that this is causing friction among the few comrades "due to stress" and assaulted by patients or their relatives who are "desperate."
And is that the only personal reinforcements that have occurred are those of the so-called "template floating", ie derived from other professional services.
"It is a template designed to reinforce areas, but the fact is used to anything, even to cover sick leave of less than three days and lately they are always in the emergency room," admits Pinto acknowledging that "this also affects the inability to enjoy one of the nine days of free provision with the nursing staff because they can not be filled. "
At this point, the nurses union representative says that "the urgent need of restructuring is very complex to achieve, but patient care would improve dramatically simply a review of staffing and increased in proportion which users have grown. "It is something that is at hand and, with goodwill, it could carry out short-term and inexpensive" he adds.