The Valencian health departments are denying vacations in summer to health personnel in the face of the rebound in income (of covid and non-covid patients) that is being registered and the lack of substitutes and reinforcements to attend to all patients.
It is the complaint made by the nursing union satsefrom which they assure that they have detected this practice in, at least, the Hospitals Doctor Peset and Clinical Hospital Valencia, two of those who have already had to expand space in Emergencies due to increased care pressure and rethink bed closure plan hospitable this summer given the certainty that they will be needed.
“Today we have dealt with the case of an emergency room nurse from D. Peset whose vacations have been withdrawn after granting them and we have been able to mediate. In this case we have found out but we know there is more”, union delegates explained yesterday satse. The “victims” are being, mainly, the 5,100 workers that since May they are occupying new structural positions in the workforce public health, the last to arrive.
“At first, no department thought of giving them vacationsand they counted on those newly incorporated people to save the summer”, they have denounced from Satse. The intervention of the unions has made it possible for whoever wanted to claim for their rights, to do so “and leave a written record of their request for vacations in summer , to which they are entitled” and there have been professionals to whom it was granted, “but now it is being revoked” or even to those who “have not been answered, despite requesting them in writing”, they explain from the union according to the cases verified in the H. Clínic.
Compensated with three more days
These workers (who constitute the latest and greatest increase in the Valencian health workforce) are not temporary workers, so from the time they took their place until December 31 “they generate their vacations and according to the working day decree they have the right to enjoy the days that correspond to them in summer”.
That yes, the law provides exceptions and compensation with three more days if this is not possible but, as Satse denounces, “this is applied in exceptional situations, not in a generalized way as they have done now.” from the union Workers Commissions also detected this practice and, after the complaints received from workers, “we submitted a letter to the Ministry of Health to ask them to rectify it but we never received a response”.
No people to hire on the stock market
The justification by the administration, which Minister Miguel Mínguez has already provided, is that there are no professionals to hire. The minister announced that through the vacation plan they were going to 7,537 contracts for substitutions and reinforcements and allow the staff vacations, with a budget of 68 million euros. Yesterday he insisted in the Corts that they had made “the best possible plan to ensure the quality of care for citizens”, and that the plan is not something improvised, since it has been working since March 21. Beyond the announcement, the truth is that there are no professionals in the stock market to incorporate for what, according to what the unions criticize, these contracts “will never be real”, according to CC OO.
The situation has dragged on for years in certain specialties (anaesthetists, family doctors, midwives…) but this year it has spread to profiles that did not pose problems such as nursing or caretakers, in part due to the hiring of structural positions in May, because many casualties are needed to be covered (the covid is also affecting the Health staff) and, according to the unions, due to the delay of the Ministry in drawing up your vacation plan and in proposing hiring. “Whoever was available may have already received offers from other communities“, they criticize.
More covid rooms and collapsed ER
The hands, come in the form of reinforcements or removing vacations, are going to be needed because the vast majority of Valencian hospitals are already noticing the rebound of covid infections and cases that need hospitalization. From last Friday to Tuesday, the number of people admitted for covid and with covid went from 702 to 905 and in recent days, the pressure and admissions have risen in all the centers.
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Some such as Torrevieja, Elx or General de Castelló have already reserved more rooms for covid and in the Clinical or Peset, have given up closing all the beds they had planned for July 1 due to this increase in demand. In the Clinic they were going to close two Traumatology and Neurology rooms (70 beds in total) and “they have backed down,” according to the unions. In Peset, two rooms with 36 beds each were going to be closed on July 1 “and the fourth-second, one of them, they are not going to close,” according to Satse.
Where the pressure is first being noticed is, as always, in the emergencies. In those of the H. General de Valencia they have been denouncing daily collapses for weeks with people waiting for days to get a bed and yesterday the situation was repeated with 62 people waiting for bed, according to the Workers’ Commissions union. They have begun to experience the same situation this week at the H. Clínic (where a third Observation room has been set up in the Emergency Department using a Traumatology waiting room) and at Doctor Peset, where a second Observation room was opened yesterday. In the Arnau Hospital “there are already some patients from the Emergency Room in the corridors”, due to lack of space, as reported by the CC OO.