Emergency department doctors walked off the job overnight, leaving patients without medical care. That was when Dawid Kacprzyk arrived at Bródnowski Hospital carrying a stack of CVs. Physicians now describe what followed as Kacprzyk’s “work cooperative.” “He wanted to be the king of the emergency departments,” one doctor said.
New details continue to emerge in the controversy surrounding Dawid Kacprzyk, a young physician who had not yet completed his specialist training. At the same time, Kacprzyk served as a councillor for the Civic Coalition (KO) and worked at several medical facilities. In addition to coordinating the emergency department at South Hospital while simultaneously serving as deputy coordinator of the emergency department at Bródnowski Hospital, he was reportedly close to taking charge of the emergency department at Wolski Hospital. He also explored the possibility of working in the emergency department at Czerniakowski Hospital in Warsaw.
“Kacprzyk wanted to be the king of the emergency departments,” one Warsaw physician said.
When doctors at the Masovian Bródnowski Hospital—a facility overseen by the Marshal of the Masovian Voivodeship, Adam Struzik of the Polish People’s Party (PSL), according to the editors—failed to report for work, the 28-year-old reportedly appeared at the hospital a few days later and offered to “bring in a new emergency department team.”
The daily Rzeczpospolita obtained a letter in which the hospital’s emergency physicians informed management that, effective immediately, they would no longer provide care for patients in the emergency department.
“This dramatic decision has been driven by our constant sense that both patient safety and the safety of the physicians responsible for their care are at risk. This results from the unlimited influx of patients to the emergency department and the numerous barriers preventing their admission to hospital wards after diagnosis and treatment in the emergency department,” the doctors wrote.
In the letter, the physicians cited professional burnout, workplace pressure, contradictory decisions and instructions, as well as threats of disciplinary measures. With one of Warsaw’s busiest emergency departments suddenly left without staff, the hospital urgently needed to secure medical coverage.
Kacprzyk’s “Work Cooperative”
According to the report, this was when Kacprzyk entered the picture. He allegedly arrived with “a stack of 40 CVs to begin with,” and the hospital management reportedly relied on “his network of contacts.”
“That was the beginning of Dawid Kacprzyk’s ‘work cooperative.’ ‘He was someone with extensive political connections and many others as well,’ one source said. ‘Emergency department rosters are patched together through personal contacts. Perhaps he was able to negotiate attractive hourly rates and assure doctors that every shift would be fully staffed, so no one would have to work alone,’ another physician said. It should be noted that Kacprzyk earned PLN 350 per hour at Bródnowski Hospital,” Rzeczpospolita reported.
The hospital is expected to complete its review of Kacprzyk’s work schedules by the end of the week. According to preliminary information, the records may indicate that he worked shifts lasting more than a dozen hours per day, despite the fact that Bródnowski Hospital was not his only place of employment.