Aug 11, 2023
A “storm” of public hospital doctors’ resignations due to poor working conditions cause a new and intense pressure on Greece’s National Health System (ESY), while the government does not take any substantial measures to prevent a collapse of the system.
Reason for the resignations is the constant movement of doctors from hospital to hospital to fill vacancies, exhausting working hours, constant on-call duty and understaffed emergency departments at regional health units.
Only last week, four out of nine surgeons at the hospital of Hania on Crete, submitted their resignation. The four surgeons stated in their resignation “under-staffing of medical personnel at the Emergency Department, given the huge overload of the hospital, especially during the summer months, that makes the operation of the General Surgery departments difficult or impossible.”
At the Venizelio hospital in Heraklion, Crete, one pathologist and one hematologist have warned that they intend to immediately submit their resignations, because, apart from everything else, “recently, the administration of the 7th Ministry of Health has been forcing doctors from the hospitals of Heraklion to they are also on duty at the Rethymnon hospital where the Pathology clinic is also being dismantled due to resignations.”
Official reports have been made to the public prosecutor’s office by the Association of Hospital Doctors of Rethymno and an extra-out-of-court warning has been sent by the Association of Hospital Doctors of Heraklion.
At the Sparta hospital, the Scientific Council, in a document dated July 3, reports the resignation of 3 qualified Pathologists, with the cause being “burnout due to under-staffing and over-vigilance.”
Three pathologists at Serres hospital in northern Greece are reportedly also on the verge of resignation.
there have been reports of other resignations in Western Greece incl the shut-down of an ICU due to personnel shortage.
According to the Federation of Associations of Hospital Doctors of Greece (OENGE), the Associations of hospital doctors that are members of OENGE and the unions of workers in public hospitals, they have warned of resignations the health Ministry since over one year.
“We have repeatedly highlighted the storm of resignations of qualified doctors due to on-call overkill, due to forced orders for alternative employment and movement, but also due to scientific and salary depreciation, there has been no substantial movement on the part of the Ministry of Health,” OEGNE said in a statement.
In fact, as the doctors report in a letter they have sent to the Minister of Health, Michalis Chrysochoidis, the dangerous and illegal orders for alternate employment and permanent movements continue, instead of covering the tragic shortages by hiring permanent staff.
As the Ministry of Health has not taken substantive measures, the storm of resignations is not only escalating, but is now developing into “the functional collapse of many regional hospitals and also the functional collapse of hospital departments in the largest cities,” as hospital doctors reported.
The situation is expected to escalate with more doctors resigning from Greece’s NHS in the coming days.
“The government bears full and sole responsibility for these dissolution phenomena. He had been warned in time, but instead of hiring medical staff, he continued to force doctors into alternate employment, constant transfers, on-call overkill with the expected result of more resignations, i.e. a fatal vicious cycle of functional collapse,” the OENGE stressed.
PS the situation reminds me of the doctors’ resignations after the first bailout during the economic crisis. With parents in and out of hospitals, I had several doctors telling me they could resign due to shortage of staff.
“I can’t stand it anymore, I have responsibility for the patients’ health, I’m in constant fear I could make a mistake.” It was a surgeon in his early 40’s, worn- and burned-out and visibly worried who was telling me this one day when I asked him why he was still in the hospital after 36 hours shift
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