Doctors across Europe say their health and that of their patients is at risk due to poor working conditions. Euronews speaks to the clinicians concerned to find out why.
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00:00 More support for health workers. That's the message striking general practitioners in Portugal had for their government in early September.
00:07 Similar walkouts have taken place in the UK, France and Spain already this year.
00:12 One expert says clinicians in Italy might soon be rallying behind them.
00:17 The main problems in Italy are the high workload, the number of patients assigned to each family member,
00:23 which is often too high and can compromise the quality of care and the accessibility of health services.
00:30 The average number of health workers in Italy is about 1,070.
00:36 Across the European continent, the battle cry is the same. Higher pay and less overtime hours.
00:42 At this moment, our gross product in health is one of the lowest all over the European Union and even in all AECD countries.
00:55 A medical doctor earns 41,000 euros a year. A specialist that works 40 hours.
01:06 Moving east to Spain, hundreds and thousands of striking health workers say they are also plagued with an excessive amount of paperwork.
01:13 There are colleagues who are on the bottom because the situation has already overwhelmed them.
01:19 Because physically they are not able to bear the workload and psychologically it has also outdone them.
01:28 But there is something that is not measured and that is very complex, which is probably, alas,
01:34 an avoidable over-mortality due to too late take-up of responsibility, due to lack of screening,
01:41 lack of prevention and also delay in taking up responsibility once the diagnosis is made.
01:46 Pussy.
01:46 (whooshing)