The head of a nurses' union announced on Saturday that on Wednesday the staff in several hospitals in the country would briefly stop working to warn citizens and the government that the situation in healthcare was untenable.

“We want to let our government and Health Ministry know and warn them that the healthcare system is indeed about to crash given the number of employees, working conditions, salaries, overtime and the absence of a collective agreement for a year and a half now,” Ankica Prasnjak told Hina.

The drive, called The Eleventh Hour, is being prepared in relation to union negotiations on a branch collective agreement in healthcare and will begin around noon in one hospital in Zagreb, one in Dubrovnik and one in Split, she said, adding that staff would cease working for 15, 30 or 60 minutes, depending on the situation in each hospital.

Prasnjak said the drive would precede a strike, adding that citizens were aware that nurses and doctors were overworked.

“But we must draw attention in some way so that the work of nurses, doctors and all employees in healthcare is not trivialised,” she said, adding that “it’s necessary to raise our salaries and keep us in Croatia as we are one of the most interesting and in-demand professions in Europe, where we get very good offers of better working conditions and better salaries.”