Representatives of trade unions such as ELA, CCOO, SATSE, LAB, UGT and ESK attended the protest in Urduliz. In their view, the types of personnel to be hired are: nurses, custodians, service workers, kitchen workers, laboratory workers, preventive workers and personnel service members.

Communiqué of the trade union delegation of Urduliz

Shortage of personnel in the hospital of Urduliz

Today there will be the opening of an important infrastructure in the Hospital of Urduliz Alfredo Espinosa, the surgical block. The trade union delegation of Urduliz welcomes this great step in the short history of this hospital, which is an investment in health in the region.

However, we want to denounce the savings that the union delegation in Urduliz is making in hiring in order to balance the important expenditure that has been made on infrastructure and material resources. Adequate and sufficient contracting is essential to carry out infrastructure of this size. Today there are services that suffer from very high workloads, which lead to stress and loss of enthusiasm in workers.

The ratios of nurse/patient and nurse assistant/patient in the emergency boxes are very high. There are two nurses and a single nurse assistant to serve the 19 boxes. By way of comparison, each Basurto nurse is responsible for 5-6 boxes.

Emergency sentinels also suffer from a shortage of working groups. A single sentinel is completely insufficient for the entire emergency service, despite the assistance of the hospitalization unit member. We also denounce the use of warehouse keepers for gutter work to perform any local hospital tasks.

The Service Staff works below the minimums in this hospital of huge corridors and large surfaces. An external company is currently conducting an audit of the service, without taking into account the opinion of the employees. In the meantime, they still don't have a cleaning protocol.

It will also be necessary to increase the hiring in the kitchen, along with the opening of new hospitalization units.

The lab staff doesn't work any better. In some shifts there is only one worker at work. An inexplicable situation when, in addition to the emergency laboratory, they are also in charge of the transfusion units.

The Basic Prevention Unit, which is responsible for carrying out risk investigations of jobs in addition to other tasks, is below the minimum. With a faculty member who is only three days a week in our hospital, a nurse and a single prevention technician, it is difficult to take care of the health of the staff. Is this how caregivers are cared for?

The Uribe OSI Personnel Service continues to have the same number of staff as before the opening of the Urduliz hospital. This creates high workloads for the workers who work there.

It will soon be two years since the first inauguration of Urduliz in June 2016. Launching a new hospital is a nice challenge for any worker and a path full of obstacles at the same time. Despite the enthusiasm and willingness of the workers to face the challenge, the lack of foresight, communication problems, the chronification of the problems and, in some cases, the scarcity of working groups, are ending with the illusion of many workers.

From the union delegation of Urduliz we denounce the undue dimensioning that the working groups of the hospital of Urduliz suffer. This significantly affects the health of workers and the quality that is given to society.

This news has been published by Triuka and we have brought it to LUZ thanks to the CC-by-sa license.