The video has been circulating on the Internet showing the Foggia paramedics barricaded behind a door to defend themselves from the relatives of a 23-year-old who died a few hours earlier. While the relatives of the deceased speak of medical negligence, today in the columns of Il Messaggero Paola Caporaletti, director of the emergency room at the Foggia polyclinic, intervenes. “A daily inconvenience for all of us – he says – physical and verbal attacks, most of which are not reported by the operators. I myself have been a victim of them on several occasions, like others. Three months ago I was pulled, they tried to hit me, I was hit in the arm. It was not the first time. I have not suffered any harm comparable to that which has just been caused to my colleagues, but it is unthinkable that a hand should be raised against anyone.” And he adds: “Doctors and patients all have the same goal: self-care. We should walk together. Whoever attacks a doctor attacks himself.”
“Complete devaluation of studies and skills”
Why are there more and more attacks in hospitals? “With a problem of alteration and non-existence of a social system, which already has repercussions. There are those who have studied to take care of others and who are treated like this. There is a total devaluation of studies and skills. Justice will take its course, without prejudice to the categorical condemnation of any form of violence in professional and human relationships, which cannot be justified even in the face of pain”, explains the leader. And again: “The consequence is that of a new generation that, increasingly, does not choose to be a doctor and, if it does, does not choose to be a hospitalist, in the more specialized categories exposed to emergencies and emergencies”.
Doctor Google
“Either you cure me now and immediately, in fact I will decide how I attack you, or I will denounce you. “I read on Doctor Google, I had news from the neighbor”. Then for years we have been reporting the lack of staff, doctors have difficulties in particular to operate the emergency rooms. It pains me that there has not yet been a rebellion among the citizens who have said: let's move, a common good that everyone still envies us is collapsing. There has been no awareness, we simply continue to demand and complain about real or presumed inefficiencies,” explains Caporaletti. “I am convinced – she adds – that a social pact of care has failed, as for teachers. Doctors treat and welcome everyone but there is a lack of recognition of professionalism and role. We do not work serenely, we feel constantly questioned and challenged in our diagnostic and therapeutic choices. Every day that we make choices, this climate does not promote the mental serenity that we must have especially in an emergency.”