no hands for bronchiolitis

The Sant Joan de Déu Hospital (Esplugues de Llobregat) has asked its healthcare workers, and in particular the nurses and nursing assistants, to recover the 12-hour shifts in the pediatric ICU and emergency department. Catalan hospitals are overcrowded with the outbreak of bronchiolitis that is occurring especially in the babies less than one year old. Sant Joan de Déu, a referral center for children, is. one of the most affected by this disease caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

The works council of Sant Joan de Déu has sent a communiqué to the staff, to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access, to inform them that the hospital’s management has informed them that there are “difficulties of coverage of all the necessary workplaces, especially for nurses and nursing assistants”.

“For this reason, we have been informed of the will of to recover the 12-hour shifts in the ICU, emergency room and eighth floor”, continues the communiqué. In the EIGHTH FLOOR, where the pediatric oncology patients used to be (in June they were transferred to the Pediatric Cancer Center of Barcelona, annexed to the hospital), are now admitting the children with bronchiolitis.

Read: covid Cataluña | Under-diagnosis of covid and another possible flu spike put Catalonia in the face of a difficult winter

Sources at the center deny that this measure is mandatory (the committee assures that the hospital will invoke Article 41 of the Workers’ Statute). “It is a voluntary, incentivized and temporary measure. Therefore, Article 41 will not apply,” the same sources point out. The 12-hour shifts were eliminated years ago. at the hospital “across the board.” “The only thing that continues to be done in specific cases and because it is often requested by the professionals themselves,” they conclude.

Committee response

For its part, the works council has sent a response to the management in which it says it does not understand “how they can pretend to mask a systematic lack of nursing professionals with the inability to deal with a Pla Integral d’Urgències de Catalunya (PIUC, which is implemented in times of increased demand for care) certainly complex, but no more difficult or exceptional than others”.

Read: China: Towards an unprecedented financial crisis?

The committee denounces the “zero investment in human capital” From management. “Make no mistake, there are nursing professionals. What we need are decent salaries and working conditions to want to be one in our institution,” reads the committee’s letter of response to Sant Joan de Déu’s management.