Dear doctors,

I received news of some vacancies at the hospital Careggi of Florence, places that you evidently leave for emergencies, those due to really important situations. Since July, the month in which I had brain radiotherapy, I have not found a place, except a few days ago, for the control MRI. If I had known that you were smart enough to leave these places, I would have called you to do it yourself. I am convinced, however, that you have reserved those vacancies for other situations as urgent as mine.

Be aware, however, that there are rumors circulating – certainly only slander, as we know, slander is a breeze – who claim that you tamper with the lists themselves to work less. This will certainly not be the case. It’s not possible.

In these two and a half years I have met many of your colleagues: at the IRST in Meldola, at the Bufalini hospital in Cesena, at the Morgagni hospital in Forlì and at the Bellaria hospital in Bologna, who welcomed me with professionalism and kindness. They visited me outside working hours and didn’t even take extra money to get me well or otherwise treated. I don’t think interns could have done something like that.

Just think, I have met many people in my same situation. There are many of us, in fact; However, nurses, health professionals and administrative staff do everything they can to make you feel at ease, recognizing the difficult situation you are in. Just think – I’m telling you this because it’s a nice thing – once, in August, after a radiotherapy session at the Bellaria hospital in Bologna, I lost my mobile phone and half the hospital mobilized to look for it. In the end, including the bar, we managed to find it! What good people there are.

You are like them. Trainees would never do something like that.
Now, I don’t want to bring up the Hippocratic Oath, but simple personal ethics.

I would like to give you some advice, if there were to be other situations like this: given that public health is suffering greatly due to lack of funds – funds that are being diverted towards weapons (listen to this nonsense) – you fight and have all the necessary diagnostic tests done. To think that the undersigned, if someone hadn’t made a mistake in the ultrasound exam on his kidney, would have risked recovering… Look at the situation that can be created!

You could run into the situation – how cool of a situation – of being able to save a human being. Isn’t this why you studied for years and years? What joy for your heart: to save a human being. But can you imagine the joy of a writer who wins the Nobel Prize for Literature? Yours would be the Nobel Prize of children who see their mother, their father alive despite a cancer diagnosis that arrived in time to recover. What a wonderful job you do.

Saving human lives.
What an ugly slander.

Thanks for your work.
It’s a bit of a journey from residents to doctors, but you’re well on your way.

Thank you.

One of those patients who may need those tests you get paid for.

“Ethics is the practice of reflecting on what we decide to do and the reasons why we decide to do it,” said Fernando Savater.

* Luigi Bray is a cancer patient. The reference is at the news of the indictment of ten specialist doctors from the Aou Careggi in Florence accused of having manipulated the computer booking system to lighten their summer shifts, exhausting the number of visits and tests that can be carried out each day with false bookings for patients (who then did not show up).