Physicians at the La Paz Hospital have denounced this Thursday the “collapse” of the center’s Post-Surgical Resuscitation Unit and have warned of the risk of scheduled surgeries being suspended after the closure of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (ICU) has forced relocate some patients.
Around a hundred health professionals have gathered, for the second consecutive day, at the doors of the La Paz Maternal and Child Hospital after yesterday’s closure of the Pediatric ICU due to the resignations and resignations of the doctors upon returning to their positions, for a court order, to the head of this service.
The La Paz Children’s Hospital, according to the Amyts union, has two ICUs, the Pediatrics ICU, equipped with twenty beds, where the conflict occurred between the head of the service and his assistant doctors and which was closed yesterday due to lack of doctors, and another Post-Surgical ICU, with nine beds, run by anesthetists, where seriously ill patients from complex surgeries go.
Jesús de Vicente, anesthetist at the La Paz Maternal and Child Hospital and delegate of Amyts, explained that with the closure of the Pediatric ICU this Wednesday, four patients who were in the hospital were transferred to the Post-Surgical Resuscitation Unit, which was already at its limit. and it became full, so it cannot accept new patients scheduled for surgery.
For this reason, Jesús de Vicente has indicated, “we run the risk of having to suspend serious scheduled surgeries such as cardiac surgeries, neurosurgeries or liver surgeries of patients who later need very specific care of intubation, mechanical ventilation or sedation, because it is overwhelmed with patients. from the Pediatric ICU”.
From the Amyts medical union, the majority in Madrid’s public health system, it has asked for “sanity” from all the parties involved in the conflict so that they do everything possible on their part to resolve it.
“It cannot be that a Children’s Hospital like La Paz has the Pediatric ICU closed,” he stressed before expressing his support to all the doctors in the Pediatric ICU service who, for different reasons, have had to give up their work with children because of this. Job issue.
The protest has been led by two banners with slogans such as “Save the Pediatric ICU” and “Save the La Paz Children’s Hospital” and some of the participants have carried signs such as “For the care of our children”, “Support for the assistants of the PICU”, “For the reopening of the PICU”, “Without the PICU there is no Children’s Hospital”, “This is not justice” or “This affects the national level”.
The participants in the mobilization, to which relatives of girls and boys admitted to the center have joined, have chanted slogans such as “If you fight against one, you fight against all”, “We treat your children” or “The transfers are not scheduled , those transferred are forced.”
Sources from the Ministry of Health have indicated that this matter is being prosecuted and that the Community of Madrid is carrying out all legal actions at its disposal to resolve the conflict.
La Paz Hospital is the only one in the Community of Madrid that performs all types of pediatric transplants and is a national reference center (CSUR) for multiple complex pathologies.
