The medical director of Buzău County Hospital, aged 37, was found dead in the emergency room

Surgeon Ștefania Szabo was found dead in the office where she was on duty.

There is no information yet on the circumstances surrounding her death, but there are no signs of violence.

The woman was found around 7:00 a.m., but initial reports indicate that she had been dead for several hours, according to the source cited.

She was last seen by her colleagues on Monday evening.

Ștefania Szabo was seen by her colleagues as exhausted, but she always stayed at the hospital because she had to go into the operating room.

Her colleagues gathered in front of the hospital in Buzău to pay their respects and said that the doctor was suffering from burnout but did not have time for herself.

„I am sounding the alarm and I sincerely ask you to understand this. It is very important to find new ways to protect ourselves from burnout. It is very important to understand when we can no longer cope, to go to the occupational health doctor and say so. I can’t do this anymore. I feel tired. I come to work and just coming to work raises my blood pressure. It is also up to us to realize our limits,” says a colleague of the deceased doctor.

The woman says that what happened to Ștefania Szabo is shocking to everyone, but it was to be expected, because there were times when she saw her „exhausted.”

„There were times when I saw her simply exhausted and asked her to go home, to take care of her health. She said, ‘No, I’m staying here because I have work to do, I have to go into the operating room. May God forgive her! She will always belong to this hospital,” said Stefania Szabo’s colleague in front of the Buzău Emergency Hospital, where medical staff gathered to hold a moment of silence for their colleague, who died on duty at only 37 years old.

Sorin Pătrașcu, manager of the Buzău Emergency Hospital, spoke with tears in his eyes about Ștefania Szabo and said that doctors are under pressure that few can cope with.

„There is pressure every day. Whether you are tired, whether you are exhausted, you are subjected to gratuitous oppression. Unjustified! There is no humanity anymore, we are asked to show empathy, but we are not treated with humanity in return. It is enough not to do something or to make the slightest mistake and you will end up being labeled a criminal, and you will end up in the press, and you will end up everywhere. You are exposed for no reason. Apart from the pressure of work, you are exposed gratuitously to things that do not belong to you. There are no longer healthy things happening in the community. Ultimately, this hospital belongs to the community, and the community must be close to the hospital, not threatening to it. What is happening in this hospital is happening in all hospitals in Romania. It is not healthy for a doctor or a hospital to be unable to intervene, to have absolutely no tools at their disposal. Only the doctor himself who feels threatened or who is offended or who is defamed has the possibility. We, as an institution, cannot defend you because the law does not allow us to. We do not have the slightest tool at our disposal to defend you. You are exposed in every way. (…) You are overburdened with everything that your job entails. But there are also some who can somehow give in,” says Pătrașcu.

The doctor arrived in Buzău in 2020, after working at the Floreasca Emergency Hospital. He was appointed medical director about a year after joining the hospital.