Tired, overworked and underpaid: Why doctors across Europe are going on strike

euronews (in English)

Doctors across Europe say their health and that of their patients is at risk due to poor working conditions. Euronews speaks to the clinicians concerned to find out why.

Transcript

00:00 More support for health workers. That's the message striking general practitioners in Portugal had for their government in early September.

00:07 Similar walkouts have taken place in the UK, France and Spain already this year.

00:12 One expert says clinicians in Italy might soon be rallying behind them.

00:17 The main problems in Italy are the high workload, the number of patients assigned to each family member,

00:23 which is often too high and can compromise the quality of care and the accessibility of health services.

00:30 The average number of health workers in Italy is about 1,070.

00:36 Across the European continent, the battle cry is the same. Higher pay and less overtime hours.

00:42 At this moment, our gross product in health is one of the lowest all over the European Union and even in all AECD countries.

00:55 A medical doctor earns 41,000 euros a year. A specialist that works 40 hours.

01:06 Moving east to Spain, hundreds and thousands of striking health workers say they are also plagued with an excessive amount of paperwork.

01:13 There are colleagues who are on the bottom because the situation has already overwhelmed them.

01:19 Because physically they are not able to bear the workload and psychologically it has also outdone them.

01:28 But there is something that is not measured and that is very complex, which is probably, alas,

01:34 an avoidable over-mortality due to too late take-up of responsibility, due to lack of screening,

01:41 lack of prevention and also delay in taking up responsibility once the diagnosis is made.

01:46 Pussy.

01:46 (whooshing)

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