Bologna, 2 July 2024 – Not only are there missing the doctors that public hospitals and private clinics compete for: the serious shortage also concerns nurses, diagnostic technicians and all the staff which deals with rehabilitationThe alarm was raised both by Anselmo Campagna, general manager of Rizzoli and technical coordinator of the national Health commission, and by Stefano Durante, care director of Sant’Orsola, during the Municipality’s Health commission.
So much so that, as Campagna announces and Durante confirms, “a negotiation is underway at the Ministry for bring nurses from India” within, in all likelihood, the end of the year. The problem of the lack of doctors and health sector personnel is now sadly known, “the result of a poorly calibrated programming for the number of doctors and nurses who graduate every year – says Campagna –. In recent years, several scholarships for the training of doctors have gone unfilled. There are specialists that are in high demand and others that are not such as anesthetists and resuscitators, cardiologists, orthopedists, anatomical pathologists, nuclear medicine doctors, general surgeons, hospital pediatricians: with these specialties you do little freelance work, so they are less rewarding than others. This is what happens when graduates in some disciplines queue up while they are deserted”. According to the general director of Rizzoli “we need to reprogram the specialties where there are shortages. And with nurses, it’s not like we’re at the last minute: more. At a national level, we are trying, through an agreement, to create paths to bring nurses here from India too”.
L’orthopedics It is one of the most suffering branches, despite this the RizzoliCampagna points out, “for better or for worse, despite the flight to the private sector, we are still able to maintain the replacement rates. The structure has a certain prestige, training capacity, so people find their gratifications and stay. Other structures struggle more. But we are trying to expand our services throughout the territory”.
The serious problem of the lack of nurses, but also laboratory technicians, diagnosticians, physiotherapists and all the staff in the rehabilitation sector, is reiterated by Durante: “The lack of health personnel is not only economic, it also concerns expectations. Since 1996 there has been a degree course but those advances, also in terms of autonomy of the profession, that had been envisaged have not materialized. Not to mention the high costs that there are in this city, especially regarding the rentals”.
What Sant’Orsola will try to do, starting from September, as Durante anticipates, is a ‘purchasing campaign’ for nurses, technicians, rehabilitators, physiotherapists. How? “Focusing on the fact that at Sant’Orsola does researchhigh-level training and innovation, so there is the possibility of Career Awards and there is no danger that they will move you around the territory. Because this is also a problem for those who come from outside the region and there are many of them”.
Regarding nurses from India, Durante underlines that “first they will have to be inserted into courses as there is also the language problembut it is the only country able to provide a significant number of nurses, and therefore export them”.
