Director Feltri,
not only do we have few doctors and few nurses but we also mistreat them, beat them, threaten them. What happened Thursday evening inside the Policlinico Riuniti in Foggia should make us reflect on the conditions of discomfort, danger and discomfort in which our staff works and lives
health care. A girl dies during an operation and about fifty people, including relatives and friends, organize an assault on the medical team that operated on the deceased patient.
Let us not be surprised then if the interest of young people towards the health professions is increasingly scarce.
Saint Perrone
Dear Saint,
the one organized by dozens and dozens of relatives and friends of the girl from Cerignola, Natasha Pugliese, who died during surgery at the Foggia hospital was a real punitive expedition against surgeons, anesthetists and nurses of the thoracic surgery department, who barricaded themselves inside a small room waiting for the arrival of the police, trying to escape. But this was not enough, because a surgeon was punched in the face, a doctor suffered a broken hand, crushed in a door. And I understand that one of their colleagues did not fare any better. These are scenes worthy of an uncivilized country and these events, unfortunately increasingly frequent, are proof of a cultural and human drift. It is not the first time it has happened and it will not be the last. The culture of disrespect is spreading, the culture of violence and brute force exercised by those who, moreover, are convinced that they are on the side of justice while using unjust and illegitimate methods and conduct. Be careful, I understand that in the face of the loss of a daughter, a friend, a niece who is so young, only 23 years old, a feeling of desperation, anger, deep pain arises in the soul, and that these emotions are accompanied by an inability to accept the sudden death of the loved one, an event that requires a long and tiring metabolization. But all this does not justify the attempt to vent acute suffering on individuals who are not guilty of the disappearance of the relative but who have done everything to save the latter’s life. There is a worrying immaturity at its core, which translates into the ineptitude to bear suffering, loss, defeat, destiny, mourning. So it becomes necessary to identify a culprit, to whom to lay and attribute the responsibility for our discomfort, so that it is perhaps easier to get rid of it, or to face it: by beating, massacring, killing this person, erasing him, we also free ourselves of those negative emotions, that is, of evil. However, this is a mere illusion. It is not revenge that soothes the torment. If anything, it aggravates it. It lifts up for a moment and then knocks down. Our pain remains attached to us. The void continues to roar in our soul.
These poor people had been treating the young woman since June, whose conditions were quite serious, having had an accident while traveling on a scooter, a device that is causing too many victims. Natasha had suffered multiple traumas to vital organs and the operations to try to save her were very complex. As a thank you, doctors and nurses were kicked and slapped.
I believe that the aspiration of young people to become doctors has decreased. Our doctors are subjected to exhausting shifts, also due to the lack of staff, they are paid little, they work in an environment that is already very stressful, considering that they are constantly in contact with the sick and the suffering, as if that were not enough, now even the relatives of the patients are involved, who beat you up if they don’t like something.
You can’t go to the ward with a helmet, a bulletproof vest and a gun. Hospitals are not trenches. And yet those who work there risk being attacked, injured and killed every day.
How did we get to this point?