When asked to doctor Tato Vázquez What an emergency doctor feels is left wondering. “Adrenaline,” she replies. Before, at a press conference, he spoke, in his capacity as president of the Spanish Society of Medicine Emergencies and EmergenciesSEMES, tension, of services to whose doors more and more patients are coming. That 70% do it on their own, without really needing that priority attention. And that, he confesses to El Periódico de España, from the same editorial group, “burn the professionals” because they, review, were formed to serve critics.
In addition to the highest representative of emergency and emergency doctors, Dr. Vázquez is the Emergency Coordinator of the Hospital do Salnés, in Vilagarcía de Arousa, Pontevedra. A center located in one of the most tourism in Galicia which, in summer, the doctor says, is overflowing with patients who, of course, also come to the doors of the Emergency Room. Give an example. He lives in anxenxo. “We passed 18,000 inhabitants in winter to more than 150,000 in the month of August. Yesterday I had a meeting at the service to see how we can fix it,” he says.
Crossed feelings
If he talks about his day to day life, he describes two crossed feelings: “On the one hand, the tension you have when you have a critical patient, who is a challenge, fascinates you. It’s what you like. It has a part of immediacy; In a short period of time you see the results. It’s very motivating“, Explain.
Another thing nuance, it is the stress generated by pathology care that it should not come to the emergency room and that, sometimes, it conditions “the fact that you go like a motorcycle from one place to another attending to what could be attended to at another level of care.” Pay attention, she says, you have to do it. He talks about those patients who come to the emergency room 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To whom assistance must always be received and given. Even if it’s for something banal.
The pressure on services is quite marked in many communities and in summer, much more so. In some coastal towns, “an outrage”
This pressure on services, at this time, is quite marked in many communities (in some, such as Cantabria, the increase has been 30% or in Navarra, where it has reached 20% compared to 2023). “And in summer, much more. In some towns on the coast, it’s outrageous. That contributes to burnout, because it takes away time from dedicating yourself to what you should dedicate yourself to, there comes a time when you go to shifts stressed,” he adds.
Complex solution
The solution, he says, is not through co-payment, but through a global agreement between social agents, the Ministry of Health, and other levels of care… He cites cases like the french model that establishes attendance criteria – with certain visits per year – or gives priority to those who arrive from their health center. “It is a very complex issue. If you have a small child and the pediatrician gives you an appointment in fifteen days, what do you do?” he warns.
Furthermore, this summer, in particular, there is one more problem, the doctor advances: “We still do not have our own residents and those from Family, who are the ones who come to our service, They don’t end until Septemberso coverage of the summer months will not be possible, and it is generating a tension that you cannot generate because summer arrives and you can’t take vacations Because who covers the service?”
Getting older
He is also concerned the aging of emergency physicians. Take the report from the Ministry of Health. In 2028, 44.2% will be over 55 and 12.4% over 60. In 2035, he adds, 55% will be over 55 and 14% will be over 60, compared to 8 .2%, in that year, in Family Medicine. “Why? Because now the ones who are suffering from the lag are the family doctors, who are the ones in the spotlight. We are going with a delay of five or six years. I say: ‘Be careful, let’s anticipate, so that what happens with Family doesn’t happen to us,’ “he says.
This feeling of absolute usefulness especially fills you in moments where the patient is taking a risk.
Dr. Tato Vázquez concludes by describing what being an emergency doctor means to him: “It is a way of living and understand medicine. Is different. I would define it as something more introspective, something interior. That one especially fills you feeling of absolute usefulness in moments where the patient is risking it.
2024-05-23 14:32:40
#frenetic #day #day #emergency #room #hospital #adrenaline #living #burns
