Malaga Hospital Clínico patient corners doctor to demand CT scan

The incident happened shortly after midnight on 1 October, when a patient demanded that she undergo a CT scan, stating that this is why she is paying taxes. She went to the A&E with abdominal pain and cornered Dr Francisco Javier Palma, who refused her an urgent CT scan.

According to Dr Palma and the patient's records, she had already received treatment for a minor condition at a private health centre and, therefore, did not need a CT scan urgently.

"A patient who came in with abdominal pain she'd been experiencing for months insisted on having an imaging scan. As she'd already had a private scan which had detected a minor condition that had since been resolved, I didn't think it appropriate to carry out an urgent CT scan. At that point, she became violent, left the consultation room, started lashing out and lunged at me, coming within a few centimetres of my face, shouting and threatening me," the doctor explained this Friday.

Francisco Javier Palma is not the first doctor to denounce the lack of "basic security measures in the A&E department". "We didn't even have a sliding door to escape through, nor any way of getting out. We have a panic button, but if it's out of reach, as was the case for me, it's useless. I found myself in a situation where no one could come to my aid," he said.

After he had called security, "the patient continued threatening, refusing to leave and blocking the consultation room, which meant I could not carry on with my work or see other patients". "We had to call the police and I had to file a complaint," Dr Palma said.

The SMM has already recorded 45 incidents of aggression, both physical and verbal in the province so far this year. The union highlights the pressure on healthcare services and the "excessive" workload the A&E team at the Clínico has to bear.

"The feeling among doctors is that we have no protection whatsoever (...) I want to do this to encourage people to speak out: no form of aggression or intimidation can be tolerated. It feels as though we have to treat patients exactly as they demand, regardless of our own well-being or mental health. They treat us as if we were robots," Dr Palma said.

According to the Clínico worker, when the incident happened, he and his colleagues had already been working for 15-16 hours. "We work under immense pressure, with overcrowding and a level of demand that we simply cannot cope with. That is why we are on strike, because it is a disgrace that we have to work in these conditions," he stated.

"We feel completely helpless and frustrated. We have studied for many years to safeguard the health of others, but we find ourselves overwhelmed by the system. We do not have adequate resources and, amid the chaos, we have to try to prioritise the most seriously ill patients. We cannot provide the standard of care we would like due to a lack of resources," Dr Palma said.

According to him, society has been given the freedom to "use A&E as a routine channel because the public health system is failing". As there are no appointments available in primary care and there are huge delays with specialists such as orthopaedics and gastroenterology, people turn up at A&E to seek answers to non-urgent problems.

"As we are required by law to treat everyone, we are forced to face up to the chaos, but we cannot cope and the solution can never be for patients to take it out on doctors," Dr Palma concluded.

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