This Wednesday, July 30, the Minister of Health will hold a meeting with the regional delegates of the communities, all political positions, to discuss a hot topic, the same one that has the doctors of Spain, especially those who spend their time and efforts in public medicine, more than worried, more than annoyed.
The so-called Marco Statute, drafted with insolvency by people resistant to dialogue, will be debated by officials who know less about emergencies, shifts, sleepless nights, illness and patients, than the professionals they do not listen to and who demand a space for dialogue.
And this is what the doctors spread, with patience worthy of Job.
“Madam Minister:
In this letter, we would like to summarize the position of the medical community on the conflict arising from your proposal for a new Marco Statute.
First of all, we want to highlight the fact that your latest draft includes improvements attributable to the pressure on the street from our group and the negotiation of the strike committee.
Among them, the breaks before and after the working day and the payment of the hour of said activity equal, at least, to the ordinary hour. We will not accept that these improvements are rejected by the Interterritorial Council alleging our demand for more ambitious reforms. Let no one use us as an excuse. The Ministry has the obligation to budget for these salary improvements and the Autonomous Communities the duty to approve and implement them.
However, these advances are not enough. The medical and faculty collective suffers the worst working conditions in the public health system. The Ministry must accept the existence of this serious problem and face its solution.
The deterioration experienced by public health is linked to its obsolete management model, its structural underfunding and the ineffective framework for dialogue and negotiation. These are matters of enormous complexity whose approach requires a decided political impulse. They are not mere technical problems. To solve them, it is necessary to leave the current regulatory framework.
The current crisis in public health is, in essence, a crisis in public medicine. Its most serious consequence is the deterioration of the quality of healthcare received by the population. Our demands respond above all to the need for our society to have a public health system worthy of a developed country.
In this context, doctors and faculty demand their own area of dialogue. It is necessary to address a change of model in the remuneration and management system of the faculty. We cannot deal with these issues at tables where general unions block any specific treatment of our situation.
We also require our own regulatory framework. The regulation of the selection and promotion of personnel, the organization of work, incentives or measures to reduce waiting lists, among many other issues, cannot be the same for all professions. For the system to work, it is essential to recognize the uniqueness of our group and develop a specific regulation of it in a Statute of the Medical and Faculty Profession.
The regulation of the faculty's working day must be improved. The workload is destroying the group and the system. We need to regulate excess working hours, guaranteeing voluntariness and improving their remuneration, guaranteeing breaks, controlling the workload and making reconciliation possible.
The situation of young doctors is unsustainable. The public system needs to attract them, but it is the group that it treats and pays the worst. Many of the salary supplements are linked to seniority. Young specialists have ridiculous salaries, in addition to enduring unacceptable precariousness. It is urgent to improve the fixed basic salaries of the group.
Finally, doctors and faculty need a formal space for dialogue with the Ministry of Health and the Health Departments. We publicly request that you meet with us again. Only by speaking and raising the problems of our group openly, with transparency and loyalty, will we be able to channel the current disagreement between doctors and the Administration.”
Doctors, indispensable assets in public health, need to be heard, and public servants, whether ministers or councilors, have the obligation and that is what they are paid for, to listen.
