Yesterday, nurses in public health units in the Algarve launched a campaign to denounce their working conditions, beginning yesterday at Faro Hospital and ending on Friday at Portimão Hospital.
The campaign, with the slogan “Our life has no overtime” has actions planned throughout the week at health centers in Vila Real de Santo António, Tavira, Albufeira, Loulé Lagos, Vila do Bispo and Aljezur.
With an estimated shortage of 1,500 professionals in the region, the Portuguese Nurses' Union (SEP) say, "what we really want is to alert the population to the brutal shortage of nurses and the excessive workloads that our colleagues are currently subjected to."
"We'll finish in Portimão, where we hope to hold a major exhibition with all the data collected and probably confirm what we suspected, which is the existence of a shortage of 1,500 nurses in the Algarve," said Guadalupe Simões.
For the SEP, the shortage of nurses in the Algarve “gets worse with each passing day”, in a general situation in which “every day nurses leave… and are not replaced”.
Guadalupe Simões considered it "curious" that the Minister of Health had as her "sole concern" the discussion of a collective labor agreement on the organization of working time, while there is legislation on the organization of working time that is not complied with due to the shortage of nurses.
"This means that the proposals coming soon aren't good, regarding the reconciliation of personal and family life, the hiring of nurses, and addressing all these needs. The Algarve is an example, but we all know that the same pattern is being followed at the national level," said the SEP official.
Workers' representatives emphasize that there is a Regulation from the Order of Nurses (Safe Staffing) that allows them to know how many nurses should work in each service, but "unfortunately, no service complies with this regulation."
The union displayed on a notice board at the entrance to Faro Hospital figures showing that the health unit is short 70 nurses in the intensive care unit or 39 in the emergency room, to name just these two services.
At Portimão Hospital, according to the SEP, there is a shortage of 20 nurses in the emergency department and 10 in the orthopedics department, among others.
The union also counted thousands of outstanding holiday days off, as well as thousands of accumulated overtime hours.
"The tendency is for this discomfort to increase, and if that happens, naturally, we will have to do something, namely, decide on ways to fight back," said Guadalupe Simões.
Source https://www.algarveprimeiro.com/
