Brotzu is at risk of collapse , and the alarm for the largest hospital in Sardinia is growing month after month. Some of the most delicate departments are struggling with an increasing overload of patients: there are not enough places, so people end up placed in the corridors .

Doctors are doing somersaults, but they can't patch up a broken health system. Beds outside the rooms, patients become pawns in a giant Risk game. "The situation is dramatic," comments Luigi Mascia, director of the complex structure of Pediatric Surgery and regional secretary of Cimo, the union of hospital doctors .

In Emergency Medicine there are 12 improvised beds created in the corridors , where - aside from treatments - the dignity of the patients seems to be lacking, each one dealing with his own pathology and with too many gears in a tailspin. Even the ultrasound room is transformed into another additional room, with four beds and as many patients who tell what it means to knock on the doors of an overbooked hospital and incapable of offering assistance to a user base that has disproportionately expanded. Things are no better in the Medicine 1 department: same floor, identical problems, there too they go on with makeshift stations in spaces where intimacy is a luxury not granted , with personal effects placed on a chair and not even a socket to charge your cell phone. There is no jumping for joy on the other floors either: the sold out condition of the Brotzu has repercussions on all the departments.

And to the shortage of beds is added the shortage of personnel: " There is a shortage of about 100 healthcare workers, the endoscopy unit has no nurses. In these conditions, having a 120 percent fill rate means making patients wait and exposing us and them to an increased probability of error ."

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