AFTER THE TRAGEDY

Goranka JureškoGoranka Jureško Croatian health care lacks four to five thousand nurses - that is the path to tragedy Their status remains undefined both when it comes to work tasks and when it comes to overtime hours, and especially their salaries Hospital in Čakovec Hospital in Čakovec Željko Hajdinjak / Cropix Posted: October 2, 2020 9:12 pm Facebook Twitter Messenger E-mail The tragedy that happened three days ago at the Čakovec General Hospital cannot be repaired. The man came on routine hemodialysis and lost his life due to a medical error. He was allegedly given a disinfectant instead of medicine! It is immutable. Everything that followed, including inspections, criminal investigations, internal control of the hospital, will not bring back the lost life, but also the life lived until this unfortunate event by the nurse who allegedly made a mistake. The family of the deceased is in great pain, but even this young woman is undoubtedly experiencing a real drama because almost at the beginning of her working life she will have to bear the consequences that will affect her entire life. These are all immutable facts of this terrible event, however it would be advisable for them to serve at least as a warning of what needs to be done to avoid similar maximum in the future. It would be illusory to say - this will never happen again, but more can be done to make the system better organized. Namely, for years there has been a warning about the lack of nurses and technicians and their overload, and covid-19 has exposed the story to the extreme because at this moment hospitals in Croatia are crying out for nursing staff more than for doctors. The data show that even without coronavirus, there is a shortage of four to five thousand nurses in Croatia, and their status is still undefined both when it comes to work tasks and when it comes to overtime hours, and especially their salaries. To be in a spacesuit all day, with a mask and visor, to care for often difficult to move or immobile patients must certainly leave a mark. RELATED NEWS Hospital in Čakovec HOSPITAL DIRECTOR The unfortunate patient was not injected with disinfectant, but a means used in the toilet and care An employee of the hospital in Čakovec: 'There are too few of us, we are shooting at the seams! Nurses and technicians are not robots' It is therefore easily possible that the young nurse to whom this tragedy occurred was also severely mistaken precisely because of the “fatigue of the material”. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, most health professionals have been further burdened. It turned out once again that with all the advances in technology for the outcome of treatment is ultimately the most important man. But whoever works is wrong. Fortunately, mistakes are less common than good outcomes, but the one “hit” at a loss is 100 percent. According to US data, as many as 400,000 Americans die each year from medical errors despite strong efforts to avoid them by improving communication and teamwork. But believing that mistakes can be 100 percent avoided is a big illusion, scientists say. This young nurse has been suspended, awaiting the verdict of various commissions, but what in this case "jumped" as unusual is that at first they declared her "absolutely guilty" without the public receiving information about the circumstances in which this happened a tragic event. “They pleaded guilty” was enough to “plead guilty,” which has not happened so far in similar circumstances. On the contrary, it mostly referred to "official actions without which there are no explicitly guilty". In this case, that "protocol" is "skipped". There was no talk of a possible faulty system that, whether some would like to admit it or not, would have to finally be "rearranged", all with the aim of clear rules and increasing quality in order to avoid similar tragedies as much as possible.