Agony' is Paweł Kapusta's reportage nominated for the Ryszard Kapuściński Prize. On the pages of the book, the author follows scandalous procedures and absurdities that make life difficult for patients and doctors alike. Many of them pose a real, direct threat to human life. Forced by the system to constantly dodge the hurdles thrown at them, the permanently overworked doctors flee to the West or burn out professionally. Kapusta's reports provide a glimpse into the everyday life of medical staff. They also shed light on the system's black holes, which can cost both health and lives.
2240.00 PLN (two thousand two hundred and forty zloty, zero cents). This is the payout for more than 80 interventions in a month, including trips to four serious car accidents, five resuscitations and four people's own deaths. The receipt for a human life is 14 PLN net per hour in Poland.
Paramedics, doctors, resident doctors, nurses, transplantologists, prison officers and, finally, patients. They talk about a reality straight out of an action film, in which they play understated supporting roles. However, the system is always in the foreground. They, in turn, in addition to putting in superhuman efforts to save lives, try to save the system's failings on a daily basis. At all costs, sometimes against procedures, they fight to minimise losses. Also in human lives.
Paweł Kapusta follows a string of outrageous absurdities and procedures that make life difficult for both patients and doctors. Absurdities that are often a direct threat to human life, valued by officials at less than a day's work at the supermarket checkout. Doctors - chronically tired, juggling between the logs thrown up by the system - fall into frustration. Or simply - they leave for the West.
The close encounters with the everyday life of medical staff in Kapusta's reportages create a poignant picture of the Polish hospital-surgical reality. And they mercilessly point out the systemic black holes for which one pays with one's health and sometimes one's life.