/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/5IF5M5LW55FPFEHDJHUQT7VZRQ.jpg)
Blanca Sellés de Oro went for a biopsy at the La Paz hospital six weeks ago. Then, eight tissue samples were taken, to analyze them and determine if the cells in that area of the body are malignant or not. But the 62-year-old patient, a nurse, has not yet received the result. The pathological anatomy service – which is responsible for this type of tests – is overloaded by the lack of personnel and laboratory technicians have begun to double shifts to carry out the 11,600 accumulated samples that are still unprocessed, according to the workers themselves on Thursday. "I've been calling patient care for five days and they don't pick up the phone. I have sent a letter [as a complaint] to the service and they have not responded either," the woman complains.
The lab technicians in La Paz can't take it anymore. They have been working twice as hard all week, but they are afraid of reprisals if they talk about it, says Guillén del Barrio, a representative at the public hospital of the Trabajadores en Red union. "They are very scared. Every time they have complained or in a meeting they have proposed improvements, they have been transferred to another department, to start from scratch, as punishment, "he explains. The health workers have counted the piles of samples several times, the last one this Thursday morning, to calculate how much delay they take: 11,600 plates with the tissue of thousands of patients and blocks of folios with hundreds of files distributed by every corner of the laboratory. There is not a free space left on the tables and just this week they have begun to analyze the samples of a month ago.
"We have received many calls from different professionals, very distressed. They are working in a situation of tremendous stress," says María Nieves Lozano Carbonero, senior technician of pathological anatomy and secretary of union action of the State Union of Higher Health Technicians. The professional points out that 11,600 unanalyzed samples does not equate to 11,600 patients waiting: "When they remove a cyst, for example, they put one or two samples. If it is a tumor equal up to 60. For appendicitis, one." But it does warn that the situation is "very serious" and the people pending a result, like Sellés, are counted in thousands.
Samples accumulated in the pathological anatomy service of the hospital of La Paz, in a ceded image.
Daniel Bernabéu, president of the Amyts union and a doctor in La Paz, says that delays in the analysis of samples are something "chronic" in the public hospital: "It is a sawtooth, with moments where it gets worse, as in summer, and others less overloaded. Now the workers go on vacation, just before there is usually a peak of surgical activity and the samples accumulate." There is a shortage of seven lab technicians, he says, and substitutions come with droppers. "This year there is an added problem, because they have hired staff with less experience, which the professionals, already saturated, have to guide. It delays everything more," explains the doctor.
When Sellés was told the result of his biopsy would take more than a month, he thought it was a mistake. But days passed, without an answer, and she began to get nervous. "The important thing in pathological anatomy is the ability to diagnose, because depending on what the biopsy says, one treatment or another is proposed. Time is vital and can make the difference between catching something on time or not," he says. In his case, he was a cancer patient and two of the eight samples are key to determining if he has new tumor cells elsewhere in the body. After the umpteenth call, they have sent him the results of six of the biopsies, but the two that most distress him are still missing. "We are patients behind every test and have the right to a quick diagnosis. Whoever has money can go to the private one to have the biopsy done and give results."
On the hospital's website, the approximate waiting times are established by type of test: a conventional biopsy is 3 to 7 days; If it includes surgical tissue, it can be extended by two weeks. The ones that take the longest are the most complex surgical pieces and gynecological cytologies, which can take up to a month. Bernabéu indicates that "normal" is that with a biopsy do not exceed 15 days and that with surgery two or three weeks. "The prolonged absence of results affects many things, but where it has more impact is in oncology, because thanks to it it is defined what treatment to start and when," adds the doctor.
"Superstressed" workers
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health admits that there are delays in the processing of samples, but points out that all casualties and replacements of senior technicians have been covered. They have hired eight people and the delays are due to "the lack of experience of the technicians hired to be able to carry out the processing of samples autonomously and the obligatory training to which they have been subjected by the hospital". Even so, he points out that they are taking measures to "recover normality" and that all urgent biopsies will be processed preferentially. "The Community of Madrid wants to send a message of tranquility to the population and, especially, to patients [...] In addition, not all biopsies are related to cancerous or tumor diseases," he adds.
For María Nieves Lozano, the overload is the result of a "bad organization" of the Madrid Health Service (Sermas): "The technicians who are calling to cover the gaps in all hospitals come from a job exchange closed in 2019." In that exchange, he explains, there are currently 943 people, and 469 of them have never worked, almost 50%. "The problem is not with the technicians, regardless of whether they train them better or worse. It is that they finished five years ago until now they have not worked. The fault lies with the general direction of human resources," he criticizes. The last opposition that the Community of Madrid took was in 2016 and the previous one in 2000, he says.
The lack of professionals extends to the rest of the hospitals in the region, but for now they have no evidence that the overload in them reaches the level of La Paz. "Until June they had a caretaker in the morning and another in the afternoon who performed technical functions [that do not correspond to them]. It has happened all my life in the hospital. They removed them and have not put anyone to replace them. There are casualties and open more because people are superstressed, the mental health of these workers is getting worse, "says Lozano. The Ministry indicates that "to solve the problem and catch up, extra work shifts will be adopted."
Del Barrio says that La Paz has already received complaints of delays in diagnosis on more than one occasion: "The situation is now extreme. It is a problem that already existed and that has been getting worse. The heads of service have been demanding more staff for some time, but it is not profitable for the hospital." The union representative explains that the hospital handles a document – called the Program Contract – that sets the 38 objectives that the management must meet. The parameter that has the most weight (with 14%) is the personnel budget. "It's a fancy way of saying they make money by not covering casualties. It is the usual trend, but in this service it is especially serious, "he adds.
Saturation and overload are two words well known to professionals working in La Paz, which serves more than 528,000 people. Every so often it jumps in social networks and media that the emergencies are up to the top, that patients do not fit anywhere and that they end up placing them in the corridors. In the center best valued by Spanish health workers for 58 years there is a lack of staff and a lack of space. It was inaugurated in 1964 and has been waiting for years for an extension that does not arrive.
📹VIDEO | Collapsed the emergencies of the Hospital la Paz
🏥They are attending to more than five hundred patients a day and are being forced to refer to other centroshttps://t.co/7WurNkReRA pic.twitter.com/xVJpZ0aWXt
— Radio Madrid (@RadioMadrid) January 9, 2023
Subscribe here to our daily newsletter about Madrid.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber