I volunteered to help my colleagues

óscar cruz Sanitas 24 hours Coordinator Sanitas Healthcare Funding

In the past, our phone calls would be emergency calls and would last three or four minutes. Now they last from ten to fifteen minutes because we are dealing with patients’ worries.

MADRID — SPAIN

On 8 January I became the father of twins, Mateo and Bruno, who are now six and a half months old. My partner’s name is Natalia. She is a nutritionist. We are both on maternity and paternity leave at the moment. I was due back at work on 12 May. Once I had agreed that with my partner, I volunteered to do telephone triage. I couldn’t stay at home watching the news on TV, and decided to support my colleagues because I was afraid my unit was falling apart. We were used to getting between 800 to 900 calls a day and around 20 to 30 emergency video appointments. Now we have around 6,500 calls a day and do over 200 video appointments.

I went to the office to get the computer equipment and set up the new office in the children’s bedroom. As they are twins and still small, we cleared out their room and had them in cribs on each side of our own bed. Then I started doing triage.

At first, I just did calls, as there were a lot of people waiting. We were used to three or four minute calls, which is normal in the emergency unit, responding to all types of emergencies, from patients with headaches to people who were unconscious. But we were now spending ten or fifteen minutes on calls and many of our patients were very worried.

We couldn’t meet the demand of the volume of calls we were receiving, so we recruited new team members and even asked for volunteers from other Sanitas departments. Together with my boss, we decided that I would provide training on the IT systems. Before that, healthcare staff were used to seeing people face to face, not virtually, and this was a big change.

In my case, being a father, I couldn’t stick to exact work hours. I would fit the work around other duties in the day. You think your first experience as a father will be all lovely and in a bubble, although obviously you are worried about your children being born and growing up healthy. My experience is different to that, very unique in all sorts of ways. �