Emergency workers are running out of strength: Up to 200 people arrive in a day, we don’t have that many beds

Only during holidays we treated over 700 patients. Normally, about 90 people came to us a day, and now 200 of them came during the holidays. There were a lot of resuscitations, strokes, and there were also those who had problems due to excessive food consumption during the holidays. We can barely stand on our feet. In an instant, there were no beds, so we put patients on the beds of trolleys that are normally found in ambulances. They also lay on it in the corridors because we didn’t have enough space – employees of the KBC Sisters of Charity told us.

They are adding to the hospital, enormous pressure since KBC Zagreb has reduced the capacity of its emergency reception, so patients are being driven to Vinogradska.

– People were nervous because of the long wait, but we worked in triage and those life-threatening patients were admitted first, the question is how long we will be able to endure this pace of work, which is not decreasing – employees tell us.

They also received 24 hours photos showing a large number of ambulances at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital and information from both the staff and the patients themselves that there are huge crowds in the emergency room.

We have also been contacted by patients who waited up to seven hours for their turn to have their blood drawn and to receive an initial diagnosis. For some, he adds, one of them, the symptoms stopped when it was their turn.

There were also numerous complaints because they did not answer the phone.

– We have so much work that we didn’t have time to answer. But we understand that the family is worried about their family member whom they would have left at the emergency room, but our priority is saving lives and providing help to our patients – they tell us.

Because of the works, the capacity for accommodating patients in the Clinic for Internal Diseases has also been somewhat reduced in Vinogradska.

‘We are in a big problem’

– We have a problem care for patients who can no longer stay in the hospital, stay too long because their families do not want to receive them at home. Once, the ambulance took a patient home, and the manž he didn’t want to open the door and admit her, so we had to admit her again. There were all kinds of cases. In any case, we are in a big problem and, in general, emergency services at the level of Croatia are in a bad situation. Doctors give up specialization in the emergency department because it is too difficult to work in that department – well-informed health workers of the KBC Sisters of Mercy tell us.

We contacted dr. Davor Vagi, director of KBC Sisters of Charity, to check what was happening in the emergency room, but he told us to send an inquiry by email and that he would answer us on a working day next week, because the head of the OHBP non-working day, and that he must report to him. We have sent the inquiry, and we will publish the answer when we receive it.

By the way, the employees of Vinogradska also tell us that it is a big problem because the health centers do their work poorly.

– They wear out a lot funds for things that could have been treated in health centers as it used to be done. For example when it comes to colds, flu, vomiting. Earlier, these easier diagnoses were treated by family medicine doctors in health centers, and today people with these symptoms come to the hospital for an emergency. The problem is that it is not possible to reach a doctor in the health center without an order, so patients come to our emergency room. Health centers have lost their function that they had before and Zagreb’s emergency room is also bursting at the seams – employees tell us.

At the same time, when we investigated the situation in the emergency departments, the Emergency Department of the city of Zagreb replied that, with occasional absences from work, they have a sufficient number of doctors for the regular organization of the service.