In Spain, a public health system on the brink
Audio 02:27
Dozens of caregivers demonstrated during the inauguration of the Isabel-Zendal hospital on Tuesday, December 1, 2020. © REUTERS / SERGIO PEREZ
By: Diane Cambon
3 mins
In Spain, the public health system is in agony after two years of pandemic.
Health personnel are on the verge of saturation and each time more doctors decide to throw in the towel, in particular by anticipating retirement age, exhausted by the working conditions of recent months.
A movement that risks aggravating an already very precarious medical situation.
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From our correspondent in Madrid,
The Spanish public health system is on the verge of implosion.
It suffers in particular from a very significant lack of personnel.
There is one nurse per 2,500 inhabitants, compared to one per 1,000 in the rest of Europe.
Most young graduates prefer to work in northern European countries, where they are better paid and with permanent contracts.
As for seniors, more and more of them are anticipating the age of retirement.
This is the case of Roberto Colino, who has just turned 63.
He has been a family doctor for 40 years and will retire two years before the legal age.
“
I never thought I was going to retire before.
I went to find out about my rights and made the decision at the time.
Even if I'm going to lose a little money, because my pension is below my salary... I've had a vocation all my life, but now it's no longer worth working in conditions that are indecent for patients and for us as professionals.
»
Privatization and bureaucracy singled out
In the sights of Spanish doctors, the entire public health system is targeted, and in particular its privatization.
Over the past twenty years, basic services have been outsourced, leading to a deterioration in the quality of these services, as Roberto explains from his medical office:
“
The abandonment of public health has been gradual.
First, we outsourced cleaning services or catering in hospitals, but now it is the analyses, X-rays and operations that are carried out in the private sector.
And with the crisis, the system completely exploded and it survives thanks to the will of the professionals, who have redoubled their efforts and thanks to this vocation of certain doctors.
»
The other flaw in the system denounced by the doctors is the overload of bureaucracy.
Healthcare workers have to spend more time on paperwork than caring for their patients, as Dr. Roberto Colino laments:
“
The pandemic represented an overload of work, but also and above all an overload of bureaucracy.
We have to deal with protocols that change all the time, which are absurd, which procrastinate, which are contradictory and which require us to fill out piles of paper.
A very heavy bureaucracy, whereas one should take care of the patients.
Truly, the handling of the pandemic is indecent.
»
According to the Spanish Medical College, nearly 45% of health personnel have suffered from burnout, a deep professional exhaustion, in the last twelve months.
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Health and medicine
Covid: disrupted professions