Irresponsibility or lack of choice • And maybe all the sanctions will cause a shock and lead to change • For and against
Nurses at Ichilov Hospital
Photo:
Joshua Joseph
The nurses are collapsing - the state has left us no choice
Ilana Cohen Chairman of the Israel Brothers and Sisters Association
Unfortunately, and out of responsibility for the entire State of Israel - we have no choice but to strike at this stage. I place all responsibility for the current situation on the Ministry of Finance. He must solve the problem immediately, as required.
First, the situation in the health system was serious even before the corona. Everyone knows they have to wait several hours in an emergency room. This was our starting point, in addition to the fact that we lack two thousand standards of nurses, both for the hospitals and for the "milk drop" centers.
Unfortunately, the current situation of the nurses is similar to the one who sends people to war - and shoots them. what does it mean? It is not enough that 1,000 nurses are now in solitary confinement, they are also taking sick days at their own expense. Do some people think that the nursing community does not live in Israel and is not afraid to infect their family members?
Nurses' protest in hospitals // Archive photo: Bnei Pleven, Zohar Glickman, Moshe Ben Simhon
In addition, when a Corona ward opens, the nurses' devices are taken from the respirators and internal wards - meaning not only are we with missing numbers of nurses, some of those who remain are transferred to the dedicated wards for Corona care. And what about the number of respirators? Last night 70 respirators were reported but do not mention the other 500 respirators - which are not related to Corona and require special monitoring of course. Not to mention that once the number of isolated rooms increases - so does the relative burden on the nurses.
Another issue that has not been addressed at all is the issue of violence. We just want to do our job and come home safe and sound! Just a year ago we were assured that there would be a police officer in every emergency room and security guards in the psychiatric hospitals - and nothing was done. And there is another matter: even without the corona, winter will soon come and more manpower is needed anyway. Things are not going well, and who knows how long it will take to prepare for further treatment of the virus.
Against the background of all these conditions, is there anyone serious who is still wondering why we are now on strike? We need to understand that we are actually being forced to strike. After all, the state could have sat with us for so long and did not. The nurses are just collapsing.
We are very sad that as such dedicated teams we have to deal with the plague in such difficult conditions. We have no interest in striking for the purpose of the strike, but the Ministry of Finance must provide us with a real solution.
• Last-minute effort to prevent the nurses' strike
• No agreements with the Treasury: The nurses have announced a general strike starting tomorrow
• Nurses threaten strike: "We are on the verge of collapse, it will cost human lives"
A strike during an epidemic is immoral
Ran Reznik
Health care workers, led by nurses and doctors, are allowed to strike. Sometimes it is even necessary to strike, when it seems that only particularly long and painful strikes have brought the Israeli governments for generations to improve the employment conditions and wages of the medical and nursing staff. Without the strikes, the Ministries of Finance and Health would have been engaging in endless procrastination, forever, of negotiations with health workers. It is also in the public interest of all of us that health care workers be fairly paid and that there be enough doctors and nurses to provide advanced and quality medical service in Israel.
In the health and medical professions, however, a strike always harms patients and causes them great suffering. Sometimes it can even cause severe and irreversible medical damage. Therefore, a strike by medical and nursing staff must be taken only as a last step in recent times, when all the summers have already passed, and after there has been a significant attempt to conduct a public struggle and negotiations without Saturdays. So much so that this point is critical, that there are medical ethicists who believe that a strike by health professionals is not moral at all.
And all this, without addressing the corona plague that threatens the entire world and poses medical and health challenges that the world has not experienced for 100 years, and is having a very hard time dealing with. It should be noted that the strike does not include the epidemiological investigations of the Corona patients, and that the Nurses' Federation ordered that these investigations be carried out "immediately and without delay" even during the strike. But the hand of the Histadrut is too light and fast on the strike trigger, and not for the first time. At this point, the strike was immoral and should not have happened.
Ilana Cohen, chairwoman of the Nurses' Federation, warned ahead of the strike that "the Ministry of Finance is not doing enough to make human life and public health a priority, and unfortunately we have no choice but to take organizational measures before we have to deal with immoral and inhumane decisions - Ilana Cohen has probably already learned that only with strikes has she been able to achieve significant achievements from the state in the working conditions and wages of the nurses, and in promoting the quality and availability of medical care for the benefit of the state's citizens.
