Accidents & Emergencies
If you need urgent treatment, perhaps because you have been injured in an accident, or you are seriously unwell, you should go to your nearest hospital. Non-urgent care is offered by local doctors, or by the on-call medical service.
The National Health Service offers an Accident & Emergency department at every hospital, called the Pronto Soccorso Ospedaliero, which offers emergency care to anyone in need of urgent treatment. If you are unable to get to your nearest hospital, perhaps because you feel too ill, you can telephone 118, the number for the mobile care unit 'Pronto Intervento', a medical service available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The mobile care unit will send a doctor to visit you, or an ambulance to take you to hospital.
At the hospital, the doctors and nurses who are on duty take care of the patients and, after an initial medical assessment, give them a priority code:
red: if a patient's life is at risk
yellow: if a patient has a serious condition but their life is not at risk
green: if a patient is ill but not seriously ill
white: if a patient is not very ill, and can wait to see their GP
It is important to go to the Accident & Emergency department only in very serious situations. If you have a non-urgent complaint you can contact the on-call medical service or wait for your doctor's surgery to reopen and make an appointment.
If you go to the Accident & Emergency department and are given a white code, because your complaint is not urgent, you are required to pay a fee of €25, unless you are exempt from paying any medical charges. This measure was introduced to discourage people from going to the Accident & Emergency department with non-urgent problems; this causes delays in hospital activities that can have negative consequences for those patients who are in real need of assistance.
Each Accident & Emergency department has to follow certain rules:
the number of doctors and nurses should be proportionate to the size of the hospital
the department should be open 24/7
there must always be at least one doctor and one nurse
one individual is responsible for everything that occurs in the department
the department should organise care and medical treatments for patients, appropriate to what the hospital is able to offer
the department should be able to carry out any initial interventions necessary in order to stabilize a patient's condition
the department should guarantee the safe transport of patients to other hospitals, if this is necessary
