Fewer and fewer public health specialists. This is the main cry of alarm that emerges from the Trauma Meeting of Otodi, the scientific society of hospital orthopedists and traumatologists, which brought together over 2500 people in Riccione.
This was reiterated by Marco Mugnaini, president of Otodi and head of the Orthopedics and Traumatology department of the Santa Maria Annunziata Hospital in Florence, who recently recalled in an interview with LaSalute di LaPresse how the main crux of care is represented by the growing difficulty in attracting young specialists to the National Health Service.
In short: it is difficult to find orthopedists for hospitals, with a job that appears less and less attractive for young people. So what? So we need to try to resolve this and other “complex fractures” in healthcare.
Looking for specialists
One of the complex fractures, perhaps the most important, is that of the lack of human capital.
“We have already strongly highlighted this problem for some time. ANAAO ASSOMED reiterated it recently: for the first time the number of white coats fleeing from the NHS is higher than that of those retiring. This is even more evident for the category of orthopedists who are incentivized for various reasons to leave public hospitals to choose affiliated private facilities”
comments Mugnaini.
According to specialists, this is the main problem to be addressed in an attempt to find some possible solution, perhaps starting from the introduction of new resources into the National Health System as a basic element, but in the presence of a programmatic plan on how to invest them.
In this sense, according to President Mugnaini, it is also necessary to streamline many bureaucratic practices that require time from the specialist.
“As orthopedists we often talk about synthesis and reduction: from fractures we also aim to do so on the time factor. Unfortunately, much of our time is absorbed by administrative and bureaucratic activities which are certainly important but never as important as the medical, clinical and surgical ones which start from listening to the patient at the first visit. This translates into an unprofitable use of already insufficient human resources”
reports Mugnaini.
Operational proposal? The experts highlight the need to “speak a single language” between the various hospital data management systems: we are studying an application with artificial intelligence capable of significantly reducing non-clinical time, increasing the performance of entire departments.
Waiting lists and organization
Traumatology is an important focus of the profession of the specialists gathered in Riccione. But in practice, within hospital wards, the organizational model risks becoming cumbersome due to the need to treat elective orthopedic patients. For example, think in this sense of those who plan a prosthesis operation for a degenerative pathology of the hip, knee or shoulder.
“Unfortunately, it often happens that pre-arranged prosthesis interventions are postponed due to the arrival of cases of trauma to be treated urgently. This inevitably translates into lengthening of waiting lists and in various Italian regions patients flee to other regions in the private sector, (with and without agreements), with an increase in passive mobility. We know well that no one at the moment has a magic wand but we propose ourselves as interlocutors with the political decision-maker to explain and implement strategic solutions that we already have “in the gut” in our scientific society”
Mugnaini points out.
