In the emergency room of a public hospital in Maceió (AL), doctor Marília Magalhães, 33, and her colleagues treat patients in the presence of two security guards at the office door. "People kick and knock on the door, scream, threaten the team. Some behave in an animalistic way with exhausted professionals, who have been working non-stop for two years in this pandemic, often with a triple workload to occupy the space of colleagues who are sick," she said.
At the Praia dos Ingleses health center, in Florianópolis (SC), nurse Andressa Albrecht, 35, was punched in the eye earlier this month when she tried to break up a fight between patients. The fight started because two doctors interrupted a patient's care for a few minutes to try to stabilize a critically ill patient brought in by ambulance.
With the explosion of cases of omicron and influenza, emergency rooms and health units that were already operating beyond the limit saw the situation worsen even more with the increase in demand and the removal of contaminated employees. In São Paulo, the Municipal Health Department registered until last Thursday (27), 4,707 professionals on leave due to Covid or flu-like illness – triple the number of workers at the beginning of the month (1,585).
The delay in care has sparked a revolt in the population and increased cases of violence against health professionals. The reports come from all over the country and affect, mainly, doctors and nursing staff of Primary Health Care and emergency care.
There are no statistics that measure this current violence, but, according to a recent survey by the Regional Nursing Council of São Paulo with 252 workers in the sector, 40.9% of professionals report having suffered verbal aggression and another 9.5% have already been victims of physical attacks. The São Paulo Physicians Union is also collecting this data.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon