The number of patients waiting to be admitted to hospital in Amadora Sintra is almost three times the capacity

On Tuesday, more than 100 patients were in the emergency room at the Amadora Sintra hospital awaiting admission, nearly tripling its capacity, the health minister said as he announced some mitigation measures.

Minister of Health Manuel Pizarro and President of the Ordem dos Enfermeiros Ana Rita Cavaco visited on Tuesday the General Emergency Service of the Fernando Fonseca Hospital, which serves the municipalities of Amadora and Sintra, where all the nurses sought medical attention. justification of responsibility, and the heads and deputy heads of the service’s teams are resigning since November, as they believe that the quality of care and the safety of patients are at stake.

At the end of the visit, Manuel Pizarro told reporters that the “biggest problem” of emergency services is not so much the influx, “which is great,” but the difficulty of getting patients from the emergency room to the wards “in a hospital that is constantly overcrowded.”

“That’s why there are 108 patients in the emergency services observatory today, when the limit should be around 40,” which, he added, creates a lot of pressure.

Manuel Pizarro explained that the patients in the observation ward had indications for hospitalization. “These are patients who need inpatient support, which gives a lot of work to nurses, doctors, and other specialists,” he stressed.

Therefore, he defended the need to create conditions so that they could be accepted “as quickly as possible”, which would likely require cooperation with other hospitals, as well as “faster articulation” with the social sector so that space in hospitals could be freed up. hospital for these patients.

According to the official, in the coming days, together with specialists and the hospital administration, new measures will be taken to mitigate this situation.

Some measures are already underway with better results, such as speeding up the discharge of users who were not hospitalized for medical reasons, he said.

“This acceleration has already begun to be noticed in the last week and at the beginning of this week, but there is a lot of work to be done on it. But there are structural problems here, this hospital does not even have enough beds for hospitalization, which requires a more decisive intervention,” he said.

Manuel Pizarro also praised the “tremendous effort” that professionals make every day “to care for patients with technical quality and humanism in a very difficult environment”, leaving them with a public thank you for their work.

Speaking to the Lusa agency at the end of the visit, the chairman of the Order of Nurses said she asked the minister to accompany her on this visit because of the excuses presented by the entire nursing team and in order for “people to feel they are not alone.”

Ana Rita Cavaco stated that solutions are needed for patients who need care but are no longer suffering from an acute illness.

“Administrations like to call social affairs. In fact, these are not social affairs. These are people who are not acutely ill, can be discharged from the hospital, but need care, especially medical care, 24 hours a day.” day, and this is incompatible with the house, because welfare houses do not have such a function, ”he defended.

The Chairman reported that there are currently welfare homes where 90% of patients are in bed, which means that they are no longer homes, but rather should belong to a continuous care network.

“Continuing care facilities are very scarce and what we need to do as a country and what the government needs to take care of quickly is aging and rethinking the continuing care network along with Social Security,” he defended.