One-day strike scheduled for March 15
Nurses will be on strike on March 15, in the fight for updated salary scales, fair pay, better working conditions and a dignified career, Portuguese Nurses’ Union SEP has announced.
According to the strike notice published today, the strike will take place from 08:00 to 24:00 (morning and afternoon shifts) on March 15 and covers nurses in the public and social sectors.
Minimum services will be in place to cover emergency situations in permanent care units that operate 24-hours a day, inpatient services that also operate 24 hours a day, intensive care, operating theaters – with the exception of scheduled surgeries – emergency rooms, hemodialysis services and cancer treatments.
Regarding minimum services relating to cancer treatments, the strike notice includes surgeries and the start of radiotherapy or chemotherapy treatments for newly diagnosed cancer diseases classified as priority level 4; surgeries for diseases with priority level 3 (if it is not possible to reschedule in the following 15 days) and the continuity of ongoing treatments.
Ongoing scheduled treatments will also be covered by minimum services, as are planned sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy programs and treatments with daily prescriptions on an outpatient basis.
But with regard to other situations, particularly scheduled surgeries, SEP says “they should be considered in accordance with the institutions’ contingency plan for situations comparable to time off – often announced at short notice – or cancellations of surgery on the same day – due to the impossibility of carrying them out during the normal working hours of the staff or operating room.”
SEP also points out that it is not necessary to provide minimum services in the case of day hospitals, since emergency requirements and “particularly serious cases” in the field of oncology are satisfied.
As for nurses’ needed to carry out the minimum services, it will be the same as that defined for night shifts – but for cancer surgeries, this number will be increased by three nursing professionals (an instrumentalist, an anesthetist and a circulator) in the operating room and one more nurse to ensure recovery.
With this strike – timed to ensure that no new government will have had time to come to grips with nurses’ demands – SEP is turning the thumb-screws on a situation that has been simmering for a very long time.
The last national nurses’ strike took place between December 21 last year and January 2, and was called by the Independent Union of All United Nurses (SITEU).
Source material: LUSA
