The group of nurses that advanced last year with crippling ‘surgical strikes’ – focused on boycotting programmed surgeries – are preparing a return to industrial action.
Vowing it will be innovative, the action will be financed by what remains in the nurses’ crowdfunded fund that financed the surgical strikes.
At its root is the fact that nurses still feel ‘undervalued’ and misunderstood by those in government.
Said one “ We have been relatively silent but not idle. Very soon we will return to the active struggle against those who do not respect us or recognise our value.”
“Our objective is that we are attended without having to cause the kind of upset that always comes with a strike.
“But if we don’t get the effect we want, we could return to think about striking”, she warned.
The fragile situation of the nation’s State health service is constantly in the news these days, with tabloid Correio da Manhã reporting in its edition today that the ‘realisation of surgeries considered urgent has practically stagnated”.
Roque da Cunha, secretary general of the independent syndicate of doctors – which has been a constant thorn in the government’s side – insists that hospitals are so under-staffed that some clinicians work two or even three shifts at a time, compromising patient safety.
