The Orthopedics department of the “Barone Romeo” hospital finally returns to full operation, guaranteeing 24-hour activity. After years of forced stops and reductions that had downgraded the operating unit to a simple outpatient unit, the structure has resumed guaranteeing ordinary hospitalizations and the performance of complex surgical operations, such as femur operations, which require long hospital stays. This is the culmination of a long and complex internal reorganization plan that began last year.
The turning point coincided with the appointment of the new head doctor, Dr. Salvatore De Francesco, whose leadership made it possible to reactivate the full-time operational unit, restoring an essential health service to the district. The excellent result was welcomed with enthusiasm by the Pattese circle of the Christian Workers Movement (MCL). In an official note, signed by the secretary Placido Salvo and the president Nunzio Saturno, the acronym expressed profound satisfaction, offering sincere praise to the commitment of the head physician and to all the operators of the department. «Thanks to the synergistic effort with the ASP of Messina, the UOC of Orthopedics – say Salvo and Saturno – managed to obtain the staff resources necessary to cover on-call shifts and on-call, putting an end to the continuous diversion of patients to other hospital facilities in the province». But despite the excellent achievement, the Christian Workers Movement still wanted to shine the spotlight on a structural criticality that risks undermining the efforts made on the personnel front. With the full functionality of the Orthopaedics, the completion of the maintenance work on the operating block of the “Baron Romeo” cannot be postponed.
To date, one operating room is still closed due to renovation work, characterized by delays defined by the union as “unjustifiable and incomprehensible”. A logistical funnel that risks creating repercussions on medical planning, with the fear, expressed by Patti’s MCL, that the impossibility of using all the operating spaces will force the facility to sacrifice the surgical interventions scheduled for months to make room only for orthopedic and surgical emergencies or those coming from the Obstetrics department. «This eventuality – Salvo and Saturno point out – would no longer be attributable to a lack of personnel, but rather to a logistical condition that should have been resolved». Finally, the appeal to the ASP leaders: «Only the total and rapid reactivation of the operating block will be able to guarantee a real and effective reduction in waiting lists».
