Surgeons of Nizhny Tagil began to quit due to slave working conditions

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The scandal with the surgeons of Nizhny Tagil, who began to quit en masse because of the slave working conditions with the complete connivance of the local authorities, became another "wake-up call" for the authorities. The situation, which showed the beauty of Dmitry Medvedev's “optimization” of medicine, was not resolved at the bottom and required the intervention of the federal center.

“We really all paid attention to the information that appears from there. This, of course, is mainly a matter for the serious reaction of the regional authorities, regional authorities, and, of course, the Ministry of Health. Therefore, they are undoubtedly dealing with this issue,”the press secretary of the President Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

This story began at the end of July, when employees of the Demidovskaya GBUZ SB in Nizhny Tagil wrote a collective letter to Governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev and Regional Health Minister Andrei Tsvetkov, in which they spoke about the crisis situation in the hospital and the mass exodus of doctors. “One doctor works in therapy for 40 beds, paramedics are on duty, two doctors in cardiology, two doctors in gastroenterologists,” they said in a letter.

Then the head of the second surgical department Denis Levchenko said: “The head of the first general surgery resigned on August 1. Endoscopists are now working in surgery. I go on vacation, after returning, if nothing changes, we quit the whole department. The head physician writes on the Internet that doctors receive 100 thousand each. And our wives ask where else 50 thousand? I have a doctor of the highest category with weekend shifts, which should be paid in double the amount, receives 45 thousand. There are not even enough anesthesiologists, we start committing crimes, working one at two places at the same time."

A commission arrived, which was supposed to resolve the issue, but in the end the doctors nevertheless staged a demarche and quit, and the patients migrated to the remaining two hospitals with surgeons. As expected, following the Demidovskys, doctors of the city hospital №1 of Nizhny Tagil wrote en masse statements. Surgeon Nikita Zotov said that the salary of leaving doctors is only 22 thousand rubles. “The salary is about 22 thousand. We earn mainly from shifts,”the surgeon said. Also, according to him, the Labor Code of the Russian Federation is being violated in the hospital. “We come to work during the day, work, smoothly switch to night duty. Although according to the code, only 12 hours can be worked without interruption, "- said Zotov. He noted that in connection with the closure of the Demidov hospital, where there was also a massive dismissal of doctors, patients began to be redirected to city hospitals No. 1 and No. 4. At the same time, the surgeon claims that the doctors were not provided with "neither resources, nor personnel, nor adequate additional payments." Zotov believes that in order to reduce the workload of specialists, at least one more surgeon should be admitted to each department. He explained that dismissal is the only mechanism available to the surgeons of the city hospital №1 to influence the authorities. “Now there is two weeks of working off, if nothing changes, we will leave,” Zotov said.

That is, according to Zotov, they were transferred to a round-the-clock work mode, where they must simultaneously perform the most complex operations, conduct an appointment and make diagnoses. The fact that this is called slavery is still half the battle, and the fact that a sleepy and unrespirated surgeon eventually begins to banally pose a danger to patients is even more terrible. “The workload is very high, it does not correspond to wages. In the Ministry of Health we are fed breakfast, they say: wait until October. What will change by October? The situation is only getting worse. While we are working. We work in full force. We are working out the two weeks allotted by the Labor Code, and we are going nowhere,”the head of the first surgical department, Yuri Izoteev, confirmed to the local media the words of his colleague.

Following it became known that the surgeons of the city hospital No. 4 in Nizhny Tagil of the Sverdlovsk region are considering the issue of dismissal. If this happens, in the second city of the Sverdlovsk region with a population of 353 thousand people, inpatient medical care will simply disappear. You don't need to be a great expert to understand: if all the surgeons leave today, then tomorrow all the sick will come to the mayor's office, and it’s good if the crutches will only knock on the floor, and not on the backs of creative officials-optimizers.

However, the regional authorities themselves, led by Sobyanin's protege Yevgeny Kuyvashev, radiate Olympic calmness and declare that the problem has been practically solved, thanks to a new word in medicine - the rotational surgeon. According to TASS, the authorities of the Sverdlovsk region expect to convince the surgeons of the Central City Hospital No. 1 in Nizhny Tagil not to quit, reducing the workload that has increased due to the dismissal of their colleagues by attracting specialists from other cities. “In early September, work should be restored at the expense of surgeons who have arrived, in particular, the regional clinical hospital and the hospital for war veterans. The surgeons will work on a rotational basis, apparently for two weeks. They will perform both planned and emergency surgical work,”said Vyacheslav Pogudin, a member of the interdepartmental commission, chairman of the social policy committee of the regional parliament, deputy from Nizhny Tagil. Moreover, it is absolutely unclear who will replace the shift workers at their main workplace already in the capital of the Urals. Further, the deputy added that there is nothing to worry about, in the future, surgeons will be arranged at the Demidov hospital on a permanent basis, there are already agreements with the candidates. In addition, according to him, it is planned to hire another specialist on a free rate in the second department of the Central City Hospital No. 1, a candidate from another city is ready to move to Nizhniy Tagil. That is, this commission did not draw any conclusions from the word at all. Just in place of some, they decided to invite other slaves in white coats who will plow while the management sends to Moscow beautiful lies about salaries of 100 thousand. and the therapists will revolt. This is the same undermining the spirit of optimization, when a person has to work for three. Moreover, as the health workers themselves report, they have been hearing the wording about "soon" almost since spring, but things are still there.

By the way, against the background of this scandal, the news about the refusal of doctors in one of Tyumen's hospitals to accept a patient with pulmonary edema a few minutes before the end of the shift is already perceived differently. Now there is a trial there, but no matter how the Nizhniy Tagil story does not repeat itself in Tyumen, when a doctor who has been optimized to the handle simply does not care if he is kicked out or he leaves.

And instead of conclusions, we will simply recall the speech of Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev on December 10, 2014. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev exuded confidence that the health care reform should be implemented, including in Moscow, but called for more tact to medical workers. He stated this in an interview with five Russian TV channels. “What I would like to draw your attention to is the need to show more tact, including towards medical workers. They are very respected people, many of them are famous people, and, of course, they deserve careful attention,”he said, speaking of health care reform.

Medvedev considered it correct that the health care reform is carried out by the authorities at the regional level. “It is normal that this (health care reform) is being done in the regions, because all our medicine, with the exception of federal medical institutions, is concentrated in the regions,” he said. “People receive medical services in the region itself. It can be a village, a small provincial town or the center of a federal subject, but it's still a region, Medvedev added. According to the head of the Cabinet of Ministers, an overabundance of medical personnel does not mean that these employees should end up on the streets as a result of the reform. “It is obvious that in a number of cases there is an oversupply of medical personnel, but this does not mean that these people who work in clinics and hospitals should be on the streets,” he said. Year 2019, optimization won.