The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has guaranteed that the reform of the framework statute that her department is working on will have as a priority addressing 24-hour medical guards and has hoped to be able to provide a solution to this “anachronism” throughout this legislature.
García spoke this way in statements to the media after being asked about the initiative that doctors from various parts of Spain have started on the Change.org platform to end these guards.
This initiative, “Your life is in our hands and WE CANNOT GET MORE: STOP 24 HOUR MEDICAL GUARDS”, has so far collected almost 80,000 signatures to modify these shifts, which pose a risk that doctors make “more serious errors” and put patients’ lives at risk, without this implying a reduction in their salaries.
“It cannot be that doctors need to do these shifts to have a decent salary. It cannot be that we normalize the fact that patients are being treated by doctors who can’t take it anymore. And it can’t be that the health workers of Spain can’t take it anymore. One thing is that we have a vocation and another that we must accept this,” denounce the promoters.
Regarding this, García recalled that the Ministry of Health is working on the reform of the Framework Statute to improve the conditions of health professionals. “And one of the issues that is a priority to address is the anachronism that 24-hour shifts represent, for which we have professionals who are working more than 50 hours a week. We believe that it does not make sense and we hope to provide a solution to what throughout the legislature,” he concluded.
