Over 2,700 hospital doctors all over Slovakia started filing their resignation notices on Tuesday as sign of their dissatisfaction with the situation in the health-care sector.
Representatives of the Doctors Trade Union (LOZ) delivered 511 notices of resignation at Bratislava University Hospital alone. LOZ head Peter Visolajsky has called on the government to negotiate with LOZ and resolve the situation in the sector. At the same time, he called on other health-care professionals to join the doctors' initiative.
"We're starting to file resignation notices throughout Slovakia today, with the current number standing at 2,713. This concerns [doctors from] more than 33-34 hospitals that have joined the initiative. These are university hospitals, all faculty hospitals, national institutes of cardiovascular diseases, smaller hospitals, private hospitals, Agel and Penta hospitals across the spectrum, across Slovakia," noted Visolajsky. He specified that resignations have been filed by doctors from key wards, such as anaesthesiology and resuscitation wards, internal wards, cardiology, surgery, traumatology, orthopaedics, paediatrics and neonatology. Gynaecologists and dermatologists are involved as well, he added.
"A two-month period of notice will start for doctors, and during this time we can also file refusals to carry out overtime work. We've collected more than 3,000 of them. We believe that the government has common sense and that the premier will halt this in the next few days," said Visolajsky. According to him, filing notices is the only way to achieve necessary changes in the sector. "We're asking the government for a meeting, ideally with the premier in attendance, at which we would sit down and resolve the issue without Slovak hospitals being left without doctors," said Visolajsky, who expects the number of resignations to grow over the next few days.
LOZ insists that the government should fulfil the points of a memorandum signed by the then cabinet with the trade union in 2022. "We have no new demands. Today we are showing the same thing that we showed two years ago and asking the government to take care of its citizens," said Visolajsky. The trade union also insists that the government should clearly declare that state-run hospitals won't be transformed into joint-stock companies.
"We're waiting for the government to stand up and clearly tell all citizens, including its voters, that it stands on the side of patients and wants to ensure a functioning health-care system for them, that it finally wants to improve our health-care system, which is constantly decaying and, as we've all been saying for years, collapsing," added the LOZ chief.
Doctors have filed resignation notices en masse in the past as well, most recently during the term of Eduard Heger's government. Over 2,100 doctors did so at that time, which resulted in several hospitals cancelling planned surgeries. The declaration of a state of emergency was under consideration as well. The government and doctors came to an agreement shortly before the period of notice expired.
Source: TASR
