Union puts an end to altruistic endeavour
DOCTORS at the x-ray department in Nicosia General Hospital have announced that they will stop working overtime in the afternoon from June 1, in a move that is expected to significantly increase waiting lists.
Staff had been working without overtime pay for almost four months to clear up a backlog of patients. The team was honouring the left-over appointments from a pilot project to shorten waiting lists that ended at the beginning February. The programme was cut short because of a lack of funding.
“If it was up to me ,I would continue it even without the guarantee of payment,” Dr Vaios Partasides, Director of the X-Ray Department at Nicosia General Hospital told the Cyprus Mail.
“However, our union pointed out that what we were doing was actually illegal under the Public Service Law, which forbids working without payment.”
Afternoon work at Nicosia General Hospital was performed as part of a pilot programme to reduce waiting lists. Although doctors confirmed that the programme was a huge success, it officially ended on February 1 because the funding for its continuation had not been secured.
As part of the project, two doctors of the x-ray department stayed on and worked four hours each in the afternoon, performing an extra 24 ultrasound checks.
The project had succeeded in significantly reducing waiting lists. Waiting time for an ultrasound, for example, was reduced from 14 to six months.
Although all other departments at the hospital stopped working overtime in the afternoon when the pilot programme ended, the x-ray department decided to continue working overtime until all pre-scheduled appointments were finished.
“For the benefit of patients who had already booked appointments, we decided to continue working in the afternoon, until all the appointments scheduled before February 1 were performed.
“We checked and saw that we had appointments booked until the end of May and did not consider it correct to call all patients and reschedule, as the next appointment could be ten months later,” Partasides said.
“So, at a meeting we decided that even though we had no guarantee that we would get paid, we would continue to work until the end of May.
“Meanwhile, all other hospital staff stopped working overtime in the afternoon on February 1. We did not do this to appear as the Good Samaritans, but to avoid the chaos of calling each and every patient and rescheduling,” he added.
The decision to stop working in the afternoon is expected to cancel out the progress achieved by the pilot programme and bring back huge waiting lists.
“I believe that problems will be created to patients as a result. We are already booking appointments for the coming December, which is a clear indication that waiting lists are growing again, although we had previously achieved substantial progress,” Partasides said.
Doctors are pinning their hopes on the Health Ministry honouring its promise of securing funding to re-introduce overtime work in the afternoon.
“It is now up to the Ministries of Health and Finance. We had been submitting detailed monthly reports to the Ministry of Finance for this purpose.
“We have been assured by the Health Minister that the funding will be approved to continue what we started with the pilot programme.
“I hope this happens because it really is a necessity. We do not want patients to wait 14-16 months to get an appointment for an x-ray or an ultrasound.”
