We have been on an indefinite strike for two months
all family doctors and pediatricians
who work in primary care in Madrid.
Public healthcare!
The reason why we have called the strike is basically to have time for patients
in the consultation room. 10 minutes in family medicine
and 15 minutes in pediatrics.
To have more time to listen to them calmly,
make a correct diagnosis and give the correct treatment.
Conditions are very precarious.
We are seeing 60-70 patients per day.
There are times when we have two or three patients at a time in five minutes.
It is impossible to work if you have no time.
It takes time to provide quality patient care.
Primary care is the foundation of the healthcare system.
It is the gateway.
All patients enter through primary care and we, by doing our job well,
are able to solve 80% of our patients’ health problems.
This prevents the hospital from collapsing and from having to deal with
all the health problems.
Therefore, what we do is to ration our resources.
Also, we are the one pillar of the entire healthcare system
that is dedicated to prevention, to solving problems before they appear.
In the last 20 years, because this didn’t start yesterday, primary care work
has been deteriorating little by little
because more family doctors and pediatricians weren’t hired.
Positions of those who retired or were transferred were not filled,
thus overloading the colleagues who are currently working
with the workload of the ones that left.
In general there are problems with family doctors and pediatricians
in primary care throughout Spain, but there are certain measures
being taken in other communities that were not implemented in Madrid.
They are trying to hire more professionals and trying to
give a little incentive to those who are left with modules of hours at
a slightly higher pay than in the Community of Madrid.
In the Community of Madrid practically nothing is being done.
Us professionals feel burned out by the situation
we are going through, the stress at work and the patient overload.
So much so that I am not going to be able to attend
the whole protest because I have an appointment at PAIPSE today.
PAIPSE is a program that provides comprehensive care for health professionals
that currently treats a lot of primary care professionals,
because we are all burned out due to the work situation we are going through.
We are trying to raise awareness in the population,
to make them see that we are not complaining about the money,
we are not complaining for political reasons, we are complaining mainly because
we are exhausted and we can’t take it anymore.
Now Madrid, Now we must clap our hands!
I was alone at the health center for a period of time,
without a substitute doctor to take over the other vacancy,
I had to see around 40-50 children per day,
between visits and phone calls, and on some occasion
it was up to 70-80 patients.
This makes it impossible to provide the children with the care they deserve.
Well, to support the lock-in protest, the truth is that we have
the help of the neighbors who are amazing,
who are wonderful, who bring us food.
Our co-workers also come, they also bring food, they encourage us,
they support us,
the neighbors are great and the truth is that
if it were not for them perhaps it would really be much harder.
Well, this is the 14th day of the doctors’ lock-in.
If us doctors have locked ourselves in and we have been here for 14 days,
like I said, it is because we are extremely worried
and we have to raise awareness in the population and realize
that if we are doing this, which we should not have to,
it is because we are very worried and have to find a way to
make everybody aware of what is happening.
These are the hands that take care of you!
Well, what we are mainly asking for is that the Community of Madrid
has to increase investment in primary care.
Over the past ten years this investment has been declining more and more
and we are losing more and more professionals,
because the working conditions are not the most adequate.
So we need more staff to be hired, we need a limit for the number
of patients that can be seen in a day.
We are asking for about 31 patients
for family doctors and about 15 for pediatricians.
And furthermore, what we are asking for is that a series of measures be taken
to ensure the loyalty of doctors in training and to make sure that the residents who
are trained every year in Madrid want to stay and work in Madrid.
The suspicion we have is that the the Community of Madrid’s
administration has a privatization plan.
They begin to erode the primary level in order to
achieve a poorer quality of service,
and that finally results in the system gradually losing quality
and thus achieving a progressive and surreptitious privatization.
Well, we have to consider that if public health care fails,
sooner or later private health care will fail.
Private care does not have the capacity to take on all public care,
so people should not believe that with a €50 insurance policy
they will have everything solved.
There will come a time when public care, public health, will fail,
private care will overflow, and there will be services
that cannot be covered because they do not have the support of public health care.
Many of the services are being privatized because they are not investing in primary care,
so money is being given to the private sector to fill the private sector’s coffers,
taking it away from the public health system. And that is much more costly.
So we need that money to come to primary care, to the public health system,
because it’s the fair thing to do for all citizens, and it does not
discriminate on the basis of a patient’s bank account.
It doesn’t matter if you have millions in your bank account or nothing at all,
the health system will continue to take care of you
and if you need a heart transplant, you will get it
regardless of how much money you have.
And if you need care for your child, you are going to get it
no matter how much money you have.
That is what we are fighting for.
Public health is one of the fundamental pillars of the Welfare State.
Here, in Spain, we have a Welfare State
which could be better, but which has taken us
many, many years to develop,
and it is based on several fundamental pillars, one of which is health care.
Health care is one of the backbone mechanisms of this society,
because all Spaniards, all people residing in Spain,
not only Spaniards, have the right to a health system,
to a public health system which in principle is built to be a quality system,
to ensure a better level of health for the population
and that no patient, for any reason whatsoever,
be exempted from this health system.