The UGT Sanidad health union has warned of the ‘serious’ situation of “saturation” in the emergency department at Son Espases University Hospital in Palma, which is generating an ‘unacceptable overload of care’. According to the union, although the flu season brings a predictable increase in demand for healthcare, the current situation ‘highlights a lack of planning and insufficient resources’ to cope with this increase.
In a statement on Wednesday, UGT publicly denounced that this situation is causing ‘significant unrest’ among professionals who, they claim, are working in a climate of ‘organisational chaos, stress and anxiety, attending to an excessive number of patients in clearly inadequate conditions’. In many cases, they reported, patients are crowded together, with no space to be placed, and remain for hours in corridors or other areas not equipped for this purpose.
The union stressed that professionals are making an extraordinary effort, but that ‘this continued overload has direct consequences on the occupational health of staff and cannot become a structural or normalised situation’. Among other issues, they have pointed out that in areas where there are normally chairs for patients to wait for results, there are now stretchers, and the chairs have been moved to the corridor, an area, they warn, where it is cold and patients are left unattended.
They also pointed out that on Tuesday, an area in radiology was opened to accommodate people awaiting admission, an area that is not equipped for long-stay patients. ‘We are talking about patients who have been waiting up to 96 hours to be admitted,’ they warned.
In view of this, the UGT has demanded that the Balearic Health Service (IbSalut) and the hospital management take urgent measures, including increasing the number of staff in the emergency department, providing adequate space to treat patients, improving planning for foreseeable peaks in demand and implementing structural solutions to prevent this situation from recurring.
And beware if travelling to the UK over the next few holiday weeks. An NHS leader has said people who are unwell with flu “must” wear a mask in public. A UK government official has said if you need to go out while sick, you should only “consider” wearing a mask. Speaking to Times Radio, Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said the UK was experiencing a “very nasty strain of flu” and people with flu or cold symptoms “must” wear a mask in public.
“When you were talking about anything like Covid, I think we need to get back into the habit that if you are coughing and sneezing, but you’re not unwell enough not to go to work, then you must wear a mask when you’re in public spaces, including on public transport, to stop the chances of you giving your virus to somebody else. And we were all very good about infection control during Covid. And we really, really need to get back to that now.”
Asked whether he meant people who have “a cold, they’re snuffling, they are coughing” should also wear a mask in the office, Elkeles said: “I think that would be very sensible to all their colleagues, or probably their colleagues would say ‘please go home’.”