Staff at Greek capital’s Sotiria Hospital issue plea for help

Staff at the Sotiria Hospital, one of the Greek capital’s biggest public healthcare facilities, issued a distress signal on Friday, writing a memo with their complaints and woes to the hospital’s management.

The shortage of medical and nursing staff was the key complaint expressed in the memo, which also stressed that a lack of beds means that staff are treating patients on cots and are having to put individuals with very serious illnesses who are on life support in regular wards, sometime sharing with another six patients.

“Back-to-back shifts are exhausting us. There are instances when there is just one nurse on duty and the one porter in each building is not enough,” the workers said. “The safe treatment of patients and the safety of workers is not possible under such circumstances.”