Call in the army to protect Italian hospital workers after multiple attacks

Doctors’ and nurses’ associations in Italy have called on authorities to consider deploying the military in hospitals due to an increase in attacks on patients and their relatives that have outraged the country.

In one of the latest, captured on video and widely shared on social media, doctors and nurses were forced to lock themselves in a room at the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, in the southern region of Puglia , on Friday after relatives and friends about 50. a 23-year-old woman who died after an emergency operation that changed the medical staff. Other health workers were injured, and blood stains were seen on the floor of the emergency room.

Two days later, the same hospital reported another assault, in which a patient kicked and punched three emergency room nurses. Then on Tuesday, also in Puglia, a patient attacked a doctor at the Francesco Ferrari hospital in Casarano, near Lecce.

Two more assaults were reported this week in the province of Naples, where health officials said patients and their families turned on emergency room doctors after being asked to wait. of them. In August Palermo, a patient’s relative beat a volunteer at Termini Imerese Hospital.

Antonio De Palma, the national president of the Nursing Up association, said he was surprised by the spread of violence. He said: “In the past 10 years, such an increase in brutality had never been reported. We have never reached such a level of danger and violence. We urgently appeal to the minister of the interior to deal with the seriousness of this situation. It is necessary to think about sending the army to the health care centers. We can no longer wait.”

The National Federation of Orders for Nursing Professions (Fnopi) condemned the “criminal acts” against health workers as “intolerable” and called for protection from the authorities to ensure that there is a safe place to work.

Loreto Gesualdo, president of the Italian Federation of Medical-Scientific Societies (Fism), proposed a law to suspend free access to medical care for three years for those who attack health workers or destroy facilities. health services.

Fism reports more than 16,000 verbal and physical attacks against doctors and nurses in Italian hospitals in 2023 alone.

Last year, a 62-year-old man was sentenced to 16 years in prison for killing a doctor in 2022 with an ax outside the Policlinico San Donato hospital in Milan because, he said, the treatment he prescribed was ineffective. help

The director of the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, Giuseppe Pasqualone, told the Guardian that the facility is close to being closed. “If we continue in this way, there is a risk of closing the emergency department due to the decreasing number of doctors, nurses and health workers,” he said.

“If the emergency department is closed, other departments may be closed. We ask patients and their families to be patient and consider that our doctors and nurses are working under great pressure due to the widespread shortage of medical professionals in our hospital, just like other hospitals. most of Italy. If we add fear to our health workers, we risk losing health workers who are willing to work in our facility. ”

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after the news release

Many attacks are caused by the lack of hospital staff and the frustration of family members due to long waiting times for surgery and consultations.

According to the medical association ANAAO, by 2022 almost half of emergency medicine positions will be vacant. Wage regulations over the past two decades to curb public spending have kept wages low, and work schedules are taking a hit. For many Italian medical workers, the Covid epidemic was an important factor, accelerating the exodus. The spending plans announced by the government of Giorgia Meloni plan to cut health care.

In 2023, according to the Conference of Scientific Societies of Italian Hospital and University Clinicians, there will be a shortage of about 30,000 doctors in Italy. Between 2010 and 2020, 111 hospitals and 113 emergency rooms closed.