The Minister of Health, Mónica García, reiterated this Wednesday her commitment to abolish 24-hour medical guards without this translating into a decrease in salaries, and to do so she has opted to reduce them progressively, starting by setting maximums of 17 hours. .
This was announced in statements to the media after meeting with intensive care doctor Tamara Contreras, who last month began collecting signatures to end 24-hour guards due to the risks they pose for professionals and patients.
The minister has recognized that it is a “complex” measure that requires a restructuring of the National Health System, for which it is necessary to modify the Framework Statute, something that her department is “fully committed” to doing before the end of 2024.
But it also needs consensus with unions, communities and other actors involved because, he insisted, they are “significant and complex measures.”
Mónica García is convinced that it is “now” when the necessary legislative reforms can be made, but “some flexibility must be given” so that this structural change “takes place little by little”, so that it is “progressively studied and , in some way, individually”, each of the services in which this rule is to be modified.
As an intermediate step before the end of the 24-hour guards, the minister has indicated that, “in the first moments”, days of a maximum of 17 hours must be worked but, in any case, she wanted to make it clear that none of this “It means that there will be a decrease in the salaries of professionals.”
“What we want is for them to work well, for no patient to be the patient who is treated at the 23rd hour, and for medical errors that occur due to the fatigue of professionals to be reduced. We are going to get to work “he emphasized.
To undertake the reform of a model that has been described as an “aberration”, we must “reorganise, restructure and better manage our work professionals and their hours of rest”, because we must not forget that “Spain is a country that is above the number of professionals per inhabitant of the OECD”.
However, he has assumed that this model of guards, in force for the last fifty years, will be “costly for Health to change because there is certain resistance.”
“On-call hours do not count as hours worked, when we count this outside people do not believe it. It is an anachronism that we have to start changing it. And the path is dialogue and above all scientific evidence, but we must begin the path little by little in consensus with the rest of the actors,” he insisted.
Tamara Contreras left the meeting “pleasantly satisfied.” “I am leaving almost happier than I was because there is a commitment to modify the Statute by the end of the year, so that in 2025 we put an end to this issue of additional hours, which are mandatory on-call hours and do not count,” she said. she.
She also knows that “it’s not going to be easy,” so she has asked all her colleagues to join together to improve her situation and “that of the patients.”
The promoter of the Change.org campaign “Your life is in our hands and WE CANNOT ANYMORE: STOP MEDICAL GUARDS 24 HOURS”, which has already gathered almost 115,000 signatures since it opened at the beginning of February, has assessed the initial reduction to 17 hours that Health considers to be “a big step.”
“We cannot go from everything to nothing or go from 24 hours to 12 without intermediate paths, of safe passage, to guarantee the doctor’s rest,” he admitted.
