The Foundation For The Defense Of Citizens Against State Abuses (FACIAS) calls on the Ministry of Health to solve the crisis of night shifts for medical staff in hospitals and emergency centres.
According to a study by the Health Solidarity Federation, in Romania an on-call lasts on average 33.3 hours and more than 93% of Romanian doctors worked more than 24 hours continuously. An emergency doctor ends up working between 5 and 10 shifts a month.
This puts doctors' lives at risk, leaving them no time to recover, and is one of the reasons for the increasing number of departures from the Romanian healthcare system. Dozens of doctors have lost their lives during or immediately after their shifts. At the same time, patients' lives are put at risk, with physically exhausted staff clearly unable to provide quality medical services.
According to the Sanitas trade union, the causes of this crisis are: failure to comply with staffing regulations, the increase in the number of patients on call, the lack of candidates for hospitals in the territory, the practice of some managers not to hire additional staff.
FACIAS asks the Minister of Health and the decision-makers at hospital level to change the staffing policy and to recognise on-call time as seniority.