Health minister Mónica García wants to end the use of 24-hour medical guards. Doctors say the guards are part of the machinery of hospitals and an important portion of the salary of many doctors.
Ending them, in the best of cases, is “very complicated” and requires a large amount of resources, say medical unions and experts consulted by this newspaper. A survey by the State Confederation of Medical Unions in 2022 showed that 87% of doctors perform on-call, although almost 60% would prefer not to do so.