3 key reasons why patients react bad

Delays in care, poorly assigned shifts for months and medications that are not achieved are three of the main reasons why the violence of patients against medical staff grow. Demand is increasing, but the Health system is overloaded and scarce in resources. A combination that is generally explosive in the hospitals of the city and the province. The sources consulted by Clarion they agree that this situation worsens year after year and The aggressions occur both at night and day. Even before the police presence.

In other cases, people who usually lose their stirrups with health workers get intoxicated to the guard or suffer some kind of mental disorder.

Carlos Rojo, president of the Association of Municipal Physicians of the city, argues that “Violence in all hospitals ” y that occur “made every day.”

“It is something terrible that is happening, very difficult to treat. People come to hospitals already irritated and have no tolerance to wait,” says Rojo, who considers that “the cases increased with respect to last year.”

The anger of patients would have to see, in part, with Line 147, to ask for shifts. “It works badly. They ask for a shift for a dermatologist and send him with a traumatologist. Or instead of sending them to a hospital nearby, they send them away. That generates violence, “analyzes the referent of Buenos Aires municipal doctors and reveals that also “Shifts are sold.”

“Some living ask several shifts in several hospitals and then sell it,” he says.

For his part, Edgardo Knopoff, press secretary of municipal doctors and head of the programmatic area of ​​the Piñero Hospital, coincides with red: “Clearly (violent events) are increasing. The system is collapsed. I am forty patients in three hours. So, that patient who is not treated and wait several hours reacts violently. “

It also tells that due “to the low budget”, Hospitals do not have the medications that people needwhich causes anger in patients. And that there is little police in the guards. “We have security cameras, but there was no one looking at. They say there is no budget for enough personnel to control them,” says Knopoff.

And he adds: “We have been claiming security forces in hospitals because There are physical aggressions and death threats to doctors all the time. “

According to Knopoff, this year there is a decrease in the budget for the purchase of medicines between 30% or 40%. “Then I have to decide which medicine to buy, and that means taking someone your medicine,” he describes.

To be consulted by Clarionthe City Ministry of Health recognizes that “The episodes of violence in health establishments respond to a social reality that also manifests itself in other areas of public life. “

“These types of situations are usually related to social tensions, economic difficulties, vulnerability conditions and, in some cases, with problems related to mental health,” he says.

Given this situation, from health they argue that they activated the “Local Security Tables” In all public hospitals in the city, which meet periodically to identify risks, prevent conflicts and coordinate rapid responses to situations of violence.

“These tables are made up of hospital representatives (managers, headquarters, union delegates and institutional referents), as well as staff of the Ministry of Security, allowing an integral and operational look of the problem,” defines the Buenos Aires portfolio.

The same panorama is repeated in the province, where cases of violence in hospitals and for very similar reasons also occur.

A source from the Buenos Aires Ministry of Health argues that “the demand for the system becomes much more acute in the last four years” and recognizes that people react violently when they are not attended as they expect. “For that, we have the program “Take care to those who care”, To sustain the mental health of doctors. “At the same time it ensures that due to these facts there is” security in all hospitals, with police and cameras. “

Jorge Mazzone, president of Medical Colleges of the Province of Buenos Aires, argues that there are no records of aggressions in hospitals and that these cases are common. “We recently had an episode at the Rossi hospital in La Plata, where a patient grabbed a matafuego and threw it against the sector in which the health personnel was,” he recalls.

Mazzone explains that in hospitals there is a combination of people who arrive at desperate or very distressed assistance, that they or their relatives are sometimes presented, poisoned, and that the public health system is far from having the answer they claim. “Missing specialized medical personnel. Vacancies cannot be covered because salaries are poor, of 900 thousand pesos. So doctors look for a work way out on the other hand,” he says.

For the medical leader, the guards are overloaded and there are no staff to serve them all. “A doctor, today, to subsist has to have five jobs. There are no people to cover all jobs, which worsens care and then the patient discharges all his anger against medical staff, “he says.

And as possible measures to improve this scenario, Mazzone asked to “educate people”, on the one hand, and “legislate an anti-violence law against the public servant, with effective compliance penalties for those who perform excesses within a health environment.”

The sources consulted by Clarion They explain that there are no updated statistics on this type of acts of violence because, generally, doctors do not report them. “They prefer not to expose themselves,” says an important public hospital professional in the city. This makes it difficult to know the problem precisely and the only thing that remains is the word of doctors, who tell in the first person the experiences suffered.

Martha Alvarez, Chief of Nursing at Santa Lucía Hospital, says that the causes of this violence are multiple and, among them, points to the number of people who, due to the economic situation, were left without social work and must resort to the public hospital. “Sometimes they demand priority in attention. And not having it, they get aggressive,” he describes and clarifies that Violence is all staff. And exemplifies: “A receptionist was insulted by a man who threatened to set the hospital fire because he did not want to wait for them to attend it.”

Another common event that occurs, according to Alvarez, is when “the doctor prescribes a medicine, the patient goes to the pharmacy and cannot buy it. Then he returns angry and insults the doctor.” And he clarifies that “before, the laboratories showed medical ones who then gave people, but today that no longer exists.”

Regarding specific cases is that of Laura Ruibal, a doctor of the SAME, who suffered several aggressions ranging from the verbal to the physical. Remember one that occurred at the eleven station of the Sarmiento train: “Upon arriving at the place, the patient, without a word, begins to hit me. After that, the panties got off and began to support his parts on my leg. He did not care that there would be police and a public place. It was a horrible moment.”

He also suffered another fact at the Fernández hospital with a person who had arrived with a skull trauma. “When wanting to help him, to do the studies, he started with fist blows and to shout at me. And the worst thing is that the family, present at the scene, justified it because the patient had problems with alcohol,” says Ruibal.

A resonant case occurred last March at the San Roque de Gonnet hospital, in La Plata, where a group of Barrabravas fought the shots in the emergency sector, in which six people finished injuries, four of them arrested.

That same month, a cleaning employee of the Pedro de Elizalde hospital in Barracas, was injured when he was attacked with a knife after telling a woman who was smoking inside the establishment, which is prohibited. On that occasion, the aggressor escaped and was not arrested.

Last year, in the merchant hospital of José C. Paz, a group of people began to break part of the facilities to pineapples and kicks, after they were notified that there was no bed to transfer a patient who was admitted and had to be operated.

In 2023, at the Fernández hospital, a 34 -year -old doctor was assaulted by the daughter of a patient who died in the guard. According to the professional, the attacker reacted very badly to the news, insulted the doctor and even hit him. He shouted that it was a “murderous and bad doctor.” And he threatened: “I’m going to sue you for bad praxis, I’m going to kill you.”

That year there was also an attack against a pediatrician, head of the Children’s Hospital “Sor María Ludovica” de la Plata. It happened during the early morning, when the doctor Mariana Lucía Cañete (49) was assaulted by the mother of a girl who had arrived for non -urgent care.

“People arrive very violent to the guard, wanting to argue”reflect, as a conclusion, RUIBAL.