Surgery assistant shortage in Hungarian hospital causes cancelled operations

On Tuesday morning, operations have been cancelled at Péterfy Street clinic and Jenő Manninger National Institute of Traumatology surgery centre in Budapest (Hungary). The reason was the lack of surgical assistants who are quitting their jobs one after another.

Hungarian news portal 168 óra has reported about the hopeless situation of emergency surgeries in Budapest.

A patient was carried into the operating room on Tuesday morning but was taken out from it without any operations. A family member of the patient asked why the patient cannot be operated; the answer was that surgeon assistants are quitting one after another in the surgery centre.

The patients and their family members best have to try asking surgeons on Wednesday morning, whether the operation could be done or not. – writes the portal.

168 óra also has reported earlier in February that the same institute’s vascular surgery is temporarily closed from 1st of March until 31th of May, due to the lack of vascular surgeons. This does not mean a complete close of vascular surgery though; it means that the clinic does not have permanent vascular surgeons at the time, but in case of urgent operations they can be called in for action.

Last summer we reported that only Bulgaria and Romania have a higher mortality rate in the hospitals of EU countries, than Hungary. Hungarian healthcare suffers from huge labour shortages of nurses, general practitioners and surgeons. The majority of them are overloaded with working hours and/or have a tiny salary.

It is yet unknown how many surgeon assistants are missing from the institution, how did they quit and why so quickly, but labour shortage of Péterfy Street hospital, unfortunately, has been a significant problem in the last years.

Source: 168ora.hu