Births without epidural anaesthesia due to lack of doctors return to the Valencian health system

From Friday the Hospital de la Plana cannot guarantee the service due to the lack of personnel caused by covid-19

Daniel Martín
2 min
THE EMOTIONAL INJURY OF THE C-Section How does a respectful C-Section have to be?  How to emotionally heal the wound

ValenciaNine months later, the lack of healthcare personnel once again limits the possibility of administering epidural anaesthesia to patients at the Hospital de la Plana, a public centre that serves the inhabitants of 33 municipalities in La Plana Baixa region, including large towns such as Vila-real, Onda and La Vall d'Uixó, as reported by the digital newspaper Vila-real Informació and confirmed to ARA by professionals at the hospital this Tuesday. The Ministry of Universal Health and Public Health has also admitted the facts, which it has argued are an extraordinary measure taken because of the lack of personnel generated by the covid-19 and that it only occurs at night .

Specifically, the absence of the service occurs since last Friday between 9 pm and 8 am, when one of the two professionals who administer this care is referred to the ICU department to compensate for the reduction in staff. The department admits this circumstance, but emphasises that in the event that a pregnant woman "arrives at night", she is warned that the hospital may be unable to administer epidural anaesthesia and is offered the possibility of being referred to another hospital. "It's the woman who decides," they emphasise.

Unlike last April, when the reduction in service also affected the Hospital General in Castellón, another health centre that does not have its own anaesthesia team for the birth area but shares it with the other departments, now the limitation is only suffered by the La Plana health centre, a small hospital but which each month attends "between 110 and 120 births, of which more than half - between 52% and 56% - require epidural anaesthesia". This has been explained to ARA by the supervisor of the midwifery service of this centre, Soledad Carreguí, who has also detailed that since Friday alone the hospital has attended 13 births, six of them at night, despite the fact that none have required the administration of epidural anaesthesia nor have any women requested it.

"We are aware of the limitations and the stress that the administration is suffering, but we have to remember that we are talking about an essential service", underlines Carreguí, who acknowledges her concern about the impact that the stress experienced by the Valencian health system can have on the quality of medical care. A danger that the Regional Ministry does not hide, given that in the Valencia Region there are already 4,777 covid patients in hospital and 607 patients in critical care beds, a circumstance that has forced the transfer of infected people to field hospitals, the postponement of non-urgent operations and the referral of patients to private health care. Unfortunately, all the figures indicate that, at least for the next few weeks, the saturation of hospitals will not stop growing.

stats