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Even in the world of Bologna’s healthcare, a flagship at a national level, not everything is going well. In fact, there is a shortage of doctors, nurses, diagnostic technicians and all the personnel who deal with rehabilitation. The alarm was raised, as reported by Resto del Carlino, by Anselmo Campagnageneral manager of Rizzoli and technical coordinator of the National Health Commission and Stephen Duringdirector of care at Sant’Orsola, during the July 1st meeting of the Municipality’s Health Commission.
So much so that “the Ministry is negotiating to bring nurses from India”, the two health managers underline. And they could start work by the end of the year.
Rizzoli is short of staff
The causes of these shortages are many, but they are above all “the result of poorly calibrated planning for the number of doctors and nurses who graduate each year”, says Campagna, for whom “we are not at the last minute with regards to nurses, more so. At a national level we are trying, through an agreement, to create paths to bring nurses here also from India”.
Orthopedics is one of the most suffering branches, despite this Rizzoli manages to guarantee performances worthy of its prestige and its history. For other structures, perhaps smaller, the situation is more complex.
At Sant’Orsola ‘purchasing campaign’ to recruit staff
These same problems are also reflected at Sant’Orsola, which from September will recruit nurses, technicians, rehabilitators, and physiotherapists. And it will do so by focusing on the career opportunities offered by the facility, which is a national research body. As for nurses from India, Durante emphasizes that, once the language problems have been overcome, they could be placed in the departments.
Nursind’s reaction
“This is not the right way to address the issue,” he comments. Antonella Rodigliano, regional secretary of Nursind – we must instead focus on attracting our professionals, who instead flee from the public sector, by guaranteeing them incentives, development prospects and welfare policies that can improve working conditions in our companies. For some time we have been denouncing difficult company management, which does not allow nurses to reconcile life and work times in the best possible way – she continues – and we can understand the positions expressed by the two companies in question if initiatives had been implemented in this direction up to now, but this has not been the case. Our complaints have always gone unheard and so, over time, the problem has only worsened”.
Not only that. According to the press, the regional health councilor himself, Raffaele Donini, with whom there is an ongoing dialogue that has been defined as “profitable” by the union in this regard, has recently admitted that the lack of personnel is also due to an economic and remuneration issue. “We know that the blanket is short,” says Rodigliano, “and for this very reason we believe it is necessary to use the resources available to make the profession more attractive rather than resorting to nurses from other countries. We need to pay more attention to the personnel in the field on a daily basis instead of establishing new top management and executive figures. This is not the time for initiatives of this kind. The priority today is another,” continues the secretary of Nursind. “If there aren’t enough nurses now, we will soon face a crisis that risks being irreversible.”
“Emilia-Romagna’s healthcare system is objectively of a higher quality than many other regions, and yet, as Donini himself admitted – says Rodigliano – many citizens continue to struggle with bookings for visits and tests, despite the strategies implemented by the Region to reduce waiting times, while the Cau are supposedly lightening the load on emergency rooms, but with the risk of nullifying these initial results that are being obtained due to the lack of personnel and costs that risk becoming excessive compared to the benefits that can be drawn from them. The fear is that containers will be created without the most important resource, namely professionals. And the same goes for health and community homes. On our part, we remain available for dialogue and discussion – concludes Rodigliano – because it is in everyone’s interest to continue to guarantee citizens an excellent service, which however necessarily passes through a level of quality of work by professionals that should not be weakened or even put in difficulty by inadequate economic conditions”.
