"It would above all promote a huge sense of justice on our part and, above all, the possibility of the most central centers", namely the hospitals of São José and Santa Maria, which are the only ones that ensure the night ophthalmology emergency in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, to be "more appealing" to be able to retain specialists, said Rita Flores.

Although the emergency is "very important" in the assistance part, "it is not at all appealing" for hospitals to be able to fill in cadres, request people, create and retain talents.

"Many of these talents prefer to go to places where their schedule, their calendar, is more sympathetic", said the director of the Ophthalmology Service of the Local Health Unit (ULS) of São José, Rita Flores, in an interview with the Lusa agency, regarding the integration, in January, of the Dr. Gama Pinto Ophthalmological Institute in this ULS.

Rita Flores criticized the fact that only Santa Maria and São José contribute to the metropolitan emergency of Lisbon, in a region that includes "many other hospitals with well-stocked ophthalmology services".

"There are many public service professionals exercising functions in these services and if all this were distributed harmoniously among everyone, I think it would not promote any disruption in the personal lives of each one", she defended.

In her opinion, "it is a problem that deserved a reflection of political power" and a revision, which has been claimed, "because it generates a huge feeling of injustice" for those who are in these hospitals.

To aggravate the situation is the fact that doctors from 55 years of age are exempted from doing emergencies and from 50 they stop doing night emergencies.

"Our cadres are aging and to keep an open surgical and medical emergency 24 hours a day, many professionals are needed, besides which the profitability of our services is also highly compromised, because we have a lot of time allocated to the emergency service, which is also unfair even in terms of profitability", she stressed.

The passage of Gama Pinto to ULS São José also led to changes in the night emergency service, since the doctors of the institute collaborated with the Santa Maria Hospital in the emergency, within the scope of an old protocol that incorporated one day a week and one weekend a month.

With the transition of doctors to ULS São José, the Santa Maria Hospital lost this support and the São José Hospital started to do one more day of emergency per week, starting to work 24 hours every day of the week.

"Now that we are all ULS São José, I also have to create some sense of justice in all the elements of my service and people are scheduled according to their service hours. I can't make exceptions", she justified.

This situation motivated dissatisfaction in some professionals from Gama Pinto and four younger ones, two with paternity hours, ended up leaving the institution, she revealed, commenting that "they are the adjustments of the teams and the secondary adjustments to the reallocation of tasks and functions that have to do with the structure of each service".

"It is very disruptive for people's lives, suddenly, to have to program the weekends, their vacations, according to their banks (...). It is disruptive for everyone's personal life and the younger generations also have a very particular way of thinking about these matters", she said.

According to Rita Flores, the ophthalmologists' cadre of Gama Pinto is "older" than that of Central Lisbon: "We have people on the verge of retirement and, in fact, this year two have already retired in full rights and two or three more will retire until the end of the year", she said, counting that in January 14 professionals were over 60 years old.

Despite the "full merger" of the services only happening in the second half of the year, with the passage of professionals and patients from the Capuchos Hospital to Gama Pinto, some patients from the institute have already been observed in Capuchos.

"It is the only way I have to help reduce the [surgical] waiting list at Gama Pinto is to take some patients, who go in groups of hundreds, to be operated on in Capuchos" until everything is fully operational.

"If they are cured of their ophthalmological problem, because it was only and exclusively cataract, they will be discharged (...) if they need surveillance, they will surely return to Gama Pinto because this is where we are", stressed Rita Flores in the centennial institution.

Regarding the assistance activity, she said that the Ophthalmology service of the Capuchos Hospital makes about 50,000 consultations per year, a number that does not differ much from Gama Pinto.

Read Also: Ophthalmology of the Capuchos Hospital passes to Gama Pinto (Portuguese version)