Cienfuegos/When Lisbeth arrived at Paquito González Cueto Pediatric Hospital, tanned after passing through several Cienfuegos Polyclinics, she thought that nothing in the Cuban health system could surprise her. Third year of Medicine, I expected that one of the most prestigious institutions in the region offered him a less crude panorama than that of other centers in which he had carried out his practices.
However, the lack of personnel – consequence of the collapse of the population – feels especially in the state sector, with unattractive wages compared to those of the private, and more specifically even in the health field, where the human factor influences the Need to make an overwriting that is not reflected at the end of the month. Public Health and Social Assistance lost 44,200 workers between 2022 and 2023, according to the last yearbook, published this year.
Of these, at least 32,000 are doctors, but the shortcomings are transversal and the students in practice not only solve the lack of doctors, but also solve tasks for which they are overwhelified.
“In my guards I have driven patients in wheel and stretchers chairs. I have had to put injections and I have even passed the broom to the consultation.”
“In my guards I have led patients in wheel and stretchers chairs. I had to put injections and I have even passed the broom to the consultation when no one is duly responsible for cleaning,” Lisbeth warns, which also warns about a problem of long data. Not only patients should take their own food if they hope to feed properly, but also the doctors themselves, as it does during these months of practices.
Unlike doctors or the rest of health personnel, medical students cannot ask for decline or move to another hospital when they do not feel comfortable in one. To do so they could even lose the diploma or be seriously admonished. The obligation to remain where they send them also makes them victims of excess work and arbitrary orders by managers.
“Sometimes I have finished my guard and I have not been able to go home to sleep, have a coffee or take a shower,” says another young man who does practices at the Dr. Gustavo Aldereguía Lima University Hospital. “The students are the last letter of the deck, they put the same to load cubes of water from the tank than to go looking for something to eat for the doctors.”
/ 14ymedio
Where he planned to find professional challenges to help him overcome, the young man has had to clean baths, get on a chair to recompose the false roof a bit so that a patient does not fall on the bed or bring a bulb from his home to be able to Use the bathroom during the early morning. “Sometimes it seems to me that I’m going to graduate from repair technician instead of a doctor.”
For his part, Lisbeth accuses her colleagues by profession of redeeming patients in exchange for “jabs loaded with food and essential products.” “It’s as if they didn’t care about others,” he says. If they have to attend a case, they prioritize the “recommended”, those who have “lever” or provide gifts, regrets.
“I have also noticed that several of our teachers, when we are attending to a patient, limit themselves to indicating a clinical procedure without explaining the cause of the disease and the reason for their decisions. We are practically doing the work of nurses, basically learning by Medium of the bibliography, sometimes outdated, ”he explains.
Lisbeth is missing several weeks to finish her rotation by Paquito González Cueto, whose structure in full deterioration is a metaphor of what happens between its walls. The worst fear of the young woman is that a really serious patient arrives, a child whose treatment does not admit tricks or improvisations. “How am I going to give security to relatives that this child can be given careful attention?” He asks.
With a medical vocation since childhood, the young woman has summarized the drama of studying medicine in a formula: her profession is beautiful, but it was difficult to study it in the wrong country.
