Since January 17, the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of the La Paz Materno-Infantil Hospital in Madrid has been closed. Of about 80 professionals, only the head of service of the unit, Pedro de la Oliva, reinstated by court order, and another doctor who had reduced hours remain. His reinstatement after winning several lawsuits against management has unleashed a serious problem in the hospital complex.
The doctors (14) are either on leave due to mental health or have resigned from their positions. Another 66 professionals (nurses, assistants, guards and administrators) have been distributed among different units of the hospital complex, one of the largest reference centers in Spain for children’s issues.
“The problem is that a labor issue, the reinstatement of the head of the unit, has led to a welfare problem,” explain sources from the Workers’ Commissions. To which they add: “The issue has been entrenched since 2020 and the result is that the hospital has been without a pediatric intensive care unit for 15 days.”
For María Jesús Durán and Ismael de La Torres, spokespersons for CCOO in La Paz, “the Ministry of Health of the Community of Madrid should make a move.”
This Wednesday the trial was held in the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid on the appeal of the Ministry of Health against a court ruling that ordered the provisional reinstatement of the head of service in his job. The ruling will be announced in a few days.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health explains that “the issue is still being prosecuted and health care is guaranteed.”
María Jesús Durán of CCOO, recognizes that the conflict “is judicialized and has a difficult solution,” but has asked that the law be complied with and the performance of the service chiefs be evaluated so that “this does not happen again.”
Durán and De La Torre explain to La Vanguardia that the appointment of a head of service is provisional for a maximum of four years and is renewable with a mandatory report from the hospital’s Technical Assistance Board, but “the problem is that this reevaluation is not carried out and renewed automatically. Hence, many bosses have almost lifelong positions and manage the units according to their needs.
These unionists comment that De la Oliva’s argument in court could have been that “this examination is not carried out on any doctor, which would be discriminatory towards him.”
For his part, Jesús de Vicente, anesthetist and delegate of the Amyts union, indicates that several patients from the pediatric ICU have been transferred to the Post-Surgical Resuscitation Unit, which has been “blocked” and where only urgent surgeries, cardiac and tumor, which could not be postponed, but non-urgent surgeries that required postoperative care have been suspended.
Amyts explains that giving the number of canceled operations is very difficult. “Instead of suspending the operations, what is done is to deschedule them, that is, the surgeon calls the patient a few days before and notifies him that instead of the scheduled date, the day of the intervention is delayed; and instead schedule a surgery that does not require a critical care bed afterwards.” “It is a complex matter, which is judicialized,” defends the Amyts delegate. The management of La Paz remains silent regarding the question of how many serious children’s operations have been postponed.
CCOO and Amyts call on all those involved to do their part to solve the problem, considering that “having the Pediatric ICU closed indefinitely is unsustainable because it supports many services in the hospital and outside the hospital.”
For Miguel Ángel Lopez de la Sem, nursing assistant in pediatrics and delegate of the CSIF union in La Paz, “the nursing and auxiliary staff of that unit are rotating through other services, with 15-day calendars. Nobody knows what is going to happen. and there is great confusion among the staff. Furthermore, Lopez de la Sem emphasizes that “it is unfeasible for a leading hospital in Spain to keep this unit closed for families who need it.”
