He became a doctor, perhaps because his mother was a nurse and because when he was in high school, the popular series was Emergency, starring George Clooney as a pediatrician that catapulted him to fame. But above all by vocation. “Without vocation … you would never become a doctor. It’s not the job with the best working conditions and the best pay,” he laments. David Andina He has always worked in the field of public health and since his last year of residency he has been doing so as a pediatrician in the emergency department of a children’s hospital in Madrid. It was hooked from the start: the adrenaline you work with, the serious pathology you face, the continuous change of patients… It’s also the best place to take the temperature of the health system and the changes to come. And with this experience, he weaves his threads on social networks where he has already become a viral pediatrician. A few weeks ago, he warned of the next wave of flu: “This flu curve in Spain is insane. Until the end of the year, terrible days await us,” he said.
What do we now see from the point of view of an emergency service?
It is true that it is a good thermometer to measure the state of health of the population. What we start to see in the emergency room precedes the epidemiological bulletin the following week. The first weeks of December, we broke records for patients treated for several days, and now we are seeing that flu patients have decreased. The epidemic is slowing among children and we are starting to see a little light on the horizon.
How did you decide to start broadcasting on social media?
I did it because institutions have abandoned the work of health education despite its importance. At a time when we could be best informed, the opposite is happening. Either we are misinformed or we get our information from sites that don’t do it well. On a typical work day, we might see 80 to 90 children; one day on call, between 270 and 300 hours. I thought I could teach many parents to distinguish when it’s important to go to a hospital emergency room and when three or four hours in a waiting room can be avoided. Or to prepare them each year for the start of school or daycare, so that they know that it is normal for their children to have five fevers throughout the school year.
Has the profile of parents who go to the emergency room changed?
What has changed is society. However, in the first hours of a febrile process, a precise diagnosis is required and this is impossible for us. We don’t have such quick answers. Immediacy is sought and there is less tolerance for adversity and illness. Thanks to our comprehensive vaccination program, serious infectious diseases have decreased. We are admitting fewer and fewer children, but oddly enough, more and more children are showing up in the emergency room. Although most cases do not end in admission or diagnosis of serious illness. This is due, in large part, to the situation in primary care, where previously there was a quicker response and parents could not get to the hospital.
Are parents coming in with the ChatGPT diagnosis, like they used to do with “Doctor Google”?
No, many can view test results and ask Chatgpt, but the doctor’s diagnosis is assumed and respected. At least, in my experience.
I suppose that during these years of profession you have seen surreal situations
Yes, but it’s better not to tell them so that no one gets angry… What I can tell you is that despite working in a children’s hospital that does not have a maternity ward, mothers who are about to give birth come to us so that we can treat them and some children are born without being prepared to attend the birth.
“We have fewer children when there is a football match or it rains a lot. We are the substitute for the health center”
Is it an urban legend that a hospital emergency room empties during a big football game?
It’s an anecdote, but we have fewer children when there is a football match, when it rains a lot or at certain times. We are the substitute for the health center that does not work.
Even if it means waiting an average of three hours to be treated?
It doesn’t seem to matter.
On social networks, he broadcasts, but also denounces, the working conditions of doctors, especially in the middle of negotiations with the Ministry of Health for framework status. Which complaint would you be satisfied with?
With the disappearance of the 5 and 24 hour guards. This threatens our mental and physical health and, above all, endangers the patients who entrust us with their health. In no country in our environment is it understood that a doctor works 17 or 24 hours straight without stopping except to eat, dine or go to the toilet.
But this situation is not new. Why was this normalized before?
The way emergency services are used has changed. Decades ago, when you were on call, you had to work in an emergency. Today, emergencies have become a service that provides continuous care to patients. There is no other time of respite than perhaps two or three in the morning. So, it’s no longer waiting to have to work, it’s working 17 or 24 hours continuously. This doesn’t make any sense.
Andina is a viral pediatrician, thanks to her health broadcast
A doctors’ strike in the middle of a flu wave is a perfect storm. Maybe citizens don’t understand it well. Like when controllers strike during the holidays. Are you afraid of losing history in the street?
I don’t think I’m lost. All it takes is for a patient to have had contact with public health to realize that this is totally unacceptable. I have patients who I leave for observation and when I take them out at 8 a.m., they are surprised that it is the same doctor who saw them the day before. They see us with dark circles under our eyes, in a terrible state…
However, on social networks we can read statements from very angry people such as: “We are getting rich with the guards”, “we are sleeping in the guards”, “the new generations can no longer stand anything…”. Which of all these statements hurts the most?
We don’t get rich and we can’t sleep under guard either. To see kids at 3 a.m., I charge less than to see them at 9 a.m. on a normal work day. Right now, if I could, I would drop everything I have to do, I would do it. In fact, guards are mandatory until age 55 for good reason. If doctors were beaten for these acts, they would not be compulsory.
“In no country in our environment is it understood that a doctor works 17 or 24 hours straight. “We are putting the health of our patients at risk.”
You define yourself as a political orphan. Do you feel betrayed by a Minister of Health who previously would have supported this strike?
As a doctor, I feel betrayed. I don’t think that Mónica García is the worst Minister of Health, but at least as far as doctors are concerned, I think she is the one who disappointed us the most because we thought that what she had declared before being minister, we were going to see reflected in our work and for now we do not see it.
Do we have the best healthcare in the world or can we no longer say it openly?
I don’t think we have the best health care, but we have some of the most accessible health care in the world. There are few countries that offer care as good as that provided in Spain, but this comes at the cost of mistreatment of professionals.
The latest CIS health barometer also shows the lowest satisfaction data among citizens. Something is happening.
— Yes, something is happening and I think one of the main issues is that primary care, for many reasons, is not the primary care that we had a few years ago. The citizens who use it realize this. I would like our health to be measured by the functioning of our health centers and not by the functioning of the transplant system.
About The Author
