Physicians at the La Paz Hospital denounced at the end of last week the “collapse” of the center’s Post-Surgical Resuscitation Unit and have warned that scheduled surgeries are already being suspended after the closure of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (ICU). has forced some patients to be relocated. In a few days, the request for signatures to find a solution exceeds 84,860 on the change.org page.
Around a hundred health professionals are gathering these days at the doors of the La Paz Maternal and Child Hospital after the closure last Wednesday of the Pediatric ICU due to the resignations and resignations of the doctors upon returning to their positions, by order judicial, to the head of this service, who is accused of harassment and humiliating treatment.
During the protest, presided over by banners that read “Save the Pediatric ICU” and “Save the La Paz Children’s Hospital” and by several signs with black ribbons, slogans were chanted such as “We are all affected,” “We are here for your children”, “Mr. Manager, it is not enough”, “We want solutions” or “Do not politicize with our patients”.
The head of Children’s Oncology of La Paz, Antonio Pérez Martínez, has explained that patients from the Pediatric ICU have been temporarily transferred to other services, such as the Post-Surgical Resuscitation Unit, the adult ICU or the neonatal ICU, within of a contingency plan that “cannot be maintained much longer over time.”
The only solution is for the Pediatric ICU to be reopened “as soon as possible” with the professionals it had, according to Pérez Martínez, who has expressed the opinion that an extraordinary situation like this requires the adoption of extraordinary measures.
The doctor pointed out that the reinstatement of the head of the service by a court decision has led his assistant doctors to leave the unit because they cannot work with him due to the deterioration of his mental health.
A Pediatric ICU nurse wanted to focus on “what’s important”, which are the patients, and who are now going to other services to receive care, although the doctors who are providing assistance to them are not specialists in pediatric intensive care.
Jesús de Vicente, anesthetist and delegate of the Amyts union, has indicated that several patients from the Pediatric ICU have been transferred to the Post-Surgical Resuscitation Unit, which has been collapsed.
He highlighted that tumor surgeries are still being performed, but surgeries are no longer being scheduled because there is no place to care for patients, so “this situation cannot be prolonged over time.”
Pilar, the mother of a multi-transplanted boy from Talavera de la Reina who has been admitted several times to the Pediatric ICU in La Paz, has stressed that the closure of this unit means that if her son had any complications he would have to be admitted to another hospital, where they could not attend to you, because La Paz is the reference center for multivisceral transplants in Spain.