Press Conference on Protracted COVID-19
Conditions – Request for Action Plans
We can no longer endure the current
situation as it is.
Once the health and medical workers
fail to stand, the entire medical system fails.
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Since
mid-December, 2020, South Korea has seen a sharp increase in the number of
COVID-19 confirmed cases. As of December 25, the newly confirmed cases were
recorded at 1,237, which is the largest-ever scale since the outbreak. As of January
7, the cumulative number of confirmed cases reaches 66,686 with the death toll
being 870.
Over
the recent several days, the number of newly confirmed cases continues to be
over 1,000, snowballing the concerns about shortage of sickbeds and exhausted
medical staff.
On
23rd, the Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union (KHMU) held an urgent press
conference over the issue. Before journalists and media, the Union called for
actions that can improve the dire situations faced by health workers, i.e., even
more aggravated shortage in personnel due to COVID-19 Pandemic/ its prolongation
and exhaustion of staff led by absence of a patients’ severity categorization
criteria.
The
Union President Na Soon-ja criticized the government for failing to establish a
practical medical system with a sufficient level of medical staff, which means
it has not been prepared to properly and timely respond to the pandemic. She
also added that the current actions taken by the government are not reflective
of real-life situations on site, calling for further proactive measures.
President
Na also requested the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters
(CDSCHQ) to have on-site roundtable sessions.
The
specific requests are as follows: ▲ install an infectious disease control tower
by regions ▲ establish staff deployment/allocation criteria by the group of
diseases and by severity. ▲ provide dispatched staff with effective pre-trainings
before starting work on site ▲ sufficiently compensate medical institutions
responding to COVID-19 ▲ provide a fair and balance support between dispatched
workers and existing staff.
Following
President Na’s statement, heads of the Union branches share their experiences
on site.
The
head Ahn Soo-gyung at the National Medical Center put an emphasis on the
importance of an organized severely sick patient’s delivery system and
rearrangement of medical system. “There have been confusions in allocating sickbeds
and severity criteria and because of it, patients with severe symptoms
sometimes have to wait to be treated for hours in an ambulance,” said Ahn.
“In certain cases, the staff was told that a mildly sick patient would come but
it was found that the patient was actually suffering severe symptoms. They had
to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation,” added she. She also reaffirmed how
important it is to increase specialized staff in categorizing and treating
severely suffering patients.
The
branch head Lee Hyun-sup at Gyeonggi Provisional Medical Center Icheon Hospital
urged the government to ensure active and fast financial assistances to
COVID-19 hospitals so that the institutions can fully focus on treating
patients confirmed with the virus. He also added that dispatched staff members
are paid four times higher than the existing ones and such a practice has
demoralized those who originally worked in the hospital.
The
branch head Kim Jeong-eun at Seonam Hospital pointed out, “The hospital was
supposed to treat patients with mild symptoms but unlike originally expected,
as intensive sickbeds increasingly lack with increasing confirmed cases, it is
now treating severely sick patients. Plus, non-COIVD-19 patients such as those
with dementia, quadriplegia or others are also increasing leading nursing
workload to extremely grow. Under this circumstance, nurses are struggling with
the heavy workload and some have finally resigned.” He also urged to unburden
nursing staff by deploying more cleaning and sanitation staff as well as
nursing assistance while establishing personnel number criteria by patients’
symptom severity levels in order to resolve such issues.
The
KHMU plans to hold an urgent discussion session as well as on-site roundtables
with the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters (CDSCHQ) so
as to publicize the current situations.
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