“It is a fact that there is a lack of healthcare professionals in this country. There are two fundamental problems. On the one hand, especially as regards doctors, in the last ten years fewer and fewer professionals have been produced compared to the need. On the other hand there was a freeze on hiring in public healthcare, so they en masse decided to go and work abroad or in the private system.” Interviewed by -, Matteo Bassettidirector of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino Polyclinic Hospital in Genoa, contextualizes the issue of the recruitment of foreign healthcare personnel in Italy.
In particular, reference is made to the choice of Guido BertolasoCouncilor for Welfare of Lombardy regionto call nurses from Argentina and Paraguay to deal with staffing shortages.
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“In Lombardy – claims Bassetti – many have chosen to migrate to Switzerland, our ruthless competitor in the North, both in terms of doctors and nurses. So two factors have come together, causing the situation to degenerate: on the one hand there is little production, on the other the professionals are not attracted into the system because they are not hired, there are only fixed-term contracts, wages are scarce, the conditions of work are not adequate. This being the case, it was inevitable that we would reach a point of no return. If you want to keep the machine going, especially the public one, you have to go fishing outside.”
However, this is an anomaly. “All this is paradoxical, because we are one of the best schools in the world, both at a nursing and medical level – says Bassetti -. The whole world comes to learn how we train them, they come to take them from us knowing that they are the best and we, instead of keeping them, export them. It’s shocking, but the blame lies exclusively with politics, which in recent years has not been able to navigate a problem that we knew would come. So today we are fishing outside Italy, but it would be good to look at our homeland and do a bit of self-criticism. If we have reached this point, it is certainly not the fault of doctors and nurses, but of those who have not been able to organize the system differently.”
And again: “I don’t know if Paraguay offers the same level of quality of training that we offer. I’d like to check it out. There are certainly excellent doctors and nurses, but we must always look at the average to see if it is the same as ours. Are we hiring doctors or nurses who are already able to work in a system like ours, with all that the language and technological barriers represent? Because I don’t think that the technological development of Paraguay is exactly the same as what we have in Italy.”
Bassetti again: “Having said this, it is clear that Bertolaso cannot help but look abroad. If there are no staff, it’s not like the hospitals can be closed. However, in an emergency situation, in addition to calling someone from abroad, you could opt for other solutions. For example, getting everyone to enter medicine for the next two years, giving the opportunity to access university to all those who want to be doctors, precisely because we need to produce.”
Bassetti then insists on the need to improve the living and working conditions of healthcare personnel in the public sector: “Perhaps it is also worth changing the conditions of medical-nursing personnel, because if we continue like this there will be more and more of a diaspora of Italians towards the private individual or abroad. We must produce more personnel, but at the same time we must attract those who have studied here, who we have trained, for whom we have spent millions of euros, because training a nurse, training a doctor costs the Italian State millions of euros. Today, the moment kids are ready, they then go abroad or into the private sector. We need to change the system with advantageous employment contracts, better working conditions, not just economic ones. It’s not just about money. It’s really a problem of quality of work, hours, environment, protection.”
But it is also a question of safety. “Every day you hear stories of someone being kicked or punched – recalls Bassetti -. If I get punched tomorrow morning, the situation is exactly what it was five years ago. What they say is not true, that is, that the attacker is prosecuted directly as a hospital. So many words and very few facts.”
Was it Covid that opened Pandora’s box? “Yes, because from then on we were never able to keep our promises – concludes Bassetti -. We all rolled up our sleeves and finally busted it, as they say. The nurses, the healthcare workers, the soldiers, people who worked 24 hours a day to keep up with everyone. It was said that after the end of Covid there would be the largest healthcare reform in history. I haven’t seen it yet.”
Nurse Times editorial team
Source: -
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