Even 42 years of experience in the health system do not prepare you for moments when it is impossible to treat patients who need us so much • CEO of Hadassah Hospital in a special column
It started last night, with this horrible zoom.
The Corona wrote the media for us on flat screens.
Inside the cubes, all of Hadassah's senior staff came up in front of me: doctors, nurses and administrative personnel.
Public hospitals in protest of budget discrimination // Photo: Yoni Rickner
Hadassah, which on January 1 was left without state support, at the height of the war in Corona where we are all recruited without reservation, it and six other public and orphaned hospitals were left unable to purchase medicines and consumables and / or pay staff.
This, while they treat more than 2 million Israelis and are located in the heart of the corona disease in the country.
For ten days now, the directors of these public hospitals have been sitting in a protest tent in front of the Ministry of Finance, and all they hear from the coalition and opposition ranks is: "You are right, but ..."
When I cling to the zoom screen in front of the executives and go up to talk Shlomi, the purchasing manager, and Orit, the pharmacy manager, describe to us all the immediate, threatening "nothingness";
Then hears Siegel, director of intensive care, about the minimal inability to care for corona intensive care patients;
And then from the Reli nurses and counting the difficulty in the pediatric wards and the bone marrow transplant department, and also Kobi, the emergency room manager, who describes knocking on the hospital door in a difficult situation - I felt suffocated, suffocating.
Tears flooded my eyes, my voice suddenly twitched, and I realized that I was really crying in front of our senior staff at Hadassah, crying in terrible frustration at the need and the "nothing"!
Yes, doctors seem to be crying too.
42 years of experience in public medicine in Israel No warehouses, even veterans like me!
And when it comes to the inability to care for patients who need us so much - our hands are empty of drugs and consumables, which are part of the care.
Faced with a horrific minority of manpower, when the distress of the crews, whom only God knows how they are on their feet, when torn in the face of the death, suffering, orphanhood and loneliness of the Corona patients struggling for every breath, when they barely move in white overalls of angels, making their way between rows The sick and the thousands of beeps of the monitoring and respiration equipment.
Yes, I, their CEO, cry, disappoint them, betray my absolute responsibility to produce minimum conditions for them, and minimal care for patients who put their heart in the CEO as well, who will not disappoint.
The tears came spontaneously out of control, they flowed down my cheeks in terrible frustration and I am ashamed that I did not endure, and did not serve as a solid cliff for all those who expected it from me.
The day of discussions with the Treasury was exhausting, emphasizing what everyone probably already understood: there is a policy of elected officials who identify with the public distress, and there is a "professional echelon" whose doctrine does not include the term "compassion."
It stood out more yesterday, in light of the moving article on Channel 12 yesterday, which expressed the cry of hospitalized patients and exhausted staff.
When I saw the patient fighting for every breath, when she was in an armchair when she could not lie down, and turned to the prime minister who would allow the staff at Hadassah to continue to give her the treatment, the barrier of tears broke through me again.
Luckily only my wife Ruthie was by my side so I let myself cry freely.
