The strike of the workers of the Emergency Service of the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital will finally start on January 29. This was announced by the Strike Committee after officially registering the notice of the strike this Friday morning. The strike, which is indefinite and will start at 00:00 hours, has the support of the CSIF Sanidad Lanzarote union and will end "after collective bargaining accepted by the Strike Committee"
In a statement, it is recalled that it was last January 9, in assembly, when the workers of the Emergency Department of the Molina Orosa Hospital agreed "unanimously" to go on strike after, according to them, they had requested "up to two occasions meetings with those responsible for the Management and Nursing Directorate, not receiving any response until the day of the assembly", summoning them to a meeting for January 31 and requesting that "a single interlocutor representative of the nursing staff who must be chosen unanimously" attend, which the Strike Committee considers "a comparative grievance" due to "the fact that the labor conflict affects all professional categories".
And, although it is true that they state that initially the mobilization was only going to be for the nursing and auxiliary staff, they point out that "once the assembly was held, the medical staff and informants joined". "We believe that all those who make up the Strike Committee should be summoned," the statement said, explaining that it is made up of five workers: three nurses, a nursing assistant and a doctor. Thus, they add, "from now on any type of negotiation must be processed from the Strike Committee established and elected in the workers' assembly held".
In that assembly, according to reports, the workers were expressing their complaints, which translate into "the constant collapse of admitted patients who cannot go up to the ward because they do not have free assigned beds or who take a long time once said bed is assigned, in addition to the progressive increase of patients every year, added to the exponential increase of tourists who visit our island, and who considerably use our emergency service". "To that we add that the surgery ward, with a scheduled completion date of September 2017, is still not a reality, with more than 40 beds that would give a fairly large relief to the hospital," they add.
All this, they say, "translates into a significant increase in the workload among the different professionals of the service, especially harming the quality of care of users."
Workers' demands
The main demands of the workers addressed to the Management for approval are that, in an "imminent" and "permanent" manner, the rear observation area with eight available beds be opened, "providing staff in shifts in a permanent manner as well, among whom must be a doctor, a nurse, an orderly and a nursing assistant".
Likewise, they request that said area have "all the necessary material to ensure the quality of care of the patients located there". The staff must be part of the emergency service staff, and the operation of said area will be managed by them, considering proposals made previously such as the possibility of allocating said area to an internal emergency unit for short stay", they also demand.
Similarly, they request that "a protocol be drawn up, through collaboration between the emergency service and the hospitalization services, detailing the necessary mechanisms to expedite the transfer of patients with beds assigned to their respective rooms, not even ruling out that the Emergency Department decides, once the bed is available, when to transfer the patient, as for example is currently done by the Resuscitation Unit (REA)".
They also request the implementation of an advanced triage "improving efficiency and effectiveness when it comes to speeding up waiting times for users" and that the resolution times of interconsultations sent from the Emergency Service to the different specialists on call be expedited".
Among their demands is also not to leave the service "without covering informant positions", to maintain the two administrative assistant positions in Emergency admission, to create an "aerosol waiting room" and, in the medium or long term, to study a project to convert a single pediatric box to unify patients and create a critical box of three beds with amplitude where the pediatric observation box is currently located.
"Our fight is to improve the quality of care"
Finally, the workers of the Emergency Department of the Molina Orosa Hospital ask the population to join them, pointing out that their fight "is to improve the quality of care that patients deserve in a public health system".
In this sense, they point out that, during the strike period, they will inform patients of the situation and their demands "so that they understand that, with improvements in the service, the quality of care will also improve". "We fight for your rights and for your health," they conclude.
