The nursing union SATSE has described this Wednesday as “critical and unmanageable” the circumstances faced by the staff of the Emergency Service at the Hospital Universitario de Canarias (HUC) in Tenerife.
Emergency service nurses are “exhausted, due to the relentless pressure and insufficient conditions in which they are compelled to operate, seriously endangering their physical and mental health, as well as their capacity to provide necessary care to patients,” the union cautioned in a statement.
SATSE has denounced the relocation of patients to the waiting room for ICU families and highlighted that the outdated emergency psychiatric observation room is being repurposed to accommodate patients arriving at the service, many of whom are on ambulance stretchers, without the appropriate triage.
This triage, SATSE continued, is being conducted by non-healthcare staff who, while they play a vital role, lack the qualifications necessary to deliver the care required by these patients, as per their criticisms.
According to the union, such measures not only jeopardise the safety and welfare of patients but also create a significant burden for triage nurses, who are now tasked with supervising these patients, a responsibility that adds to their already demanding duties.
The union organisation acknowledges that there are structural challenges in the appropriate placement of patients in the emergency department.
Nevertheless, “we cannot agree to have the solutions for these issues placed upon nurses, which unsustainably raises their workload and compromises the quality of care they strive to deliver,” they added.
Consequently, SATSE demands the immediate cessation of using the emergency observation room as a space for patient relocation under the exclusive oversight of non-medical personnel.
Additionally, they are calling for an increase in nursing staff in critical areas to ensure adequate and safe patient care.
For SATSE, it is essential to guarantee the safety of both patients and nursing professionals, who can no longer endure such an extreme workload.
“The staff are at the limit of their capabilities, which adversely impacts both their well-being and the quality of care,” they concluded in the statement.
