The Ministry of Health will study, together with the Ministry of Finance and Public Function, the requalification of the category of nurses, as well as the rest of the health professions: “from nurses to guards,” indicated Minister Mónica García. It is necessary, indicated the head of Health, to recognize the role of nurses. Without them, the health system collapses. It is time to study it,” García explained after the meeting of the Interterritorial Health Council.
Upgrading their category (from A2, where they are currently, to A1, which includes doctors) has been a demand from nurses since the Bologna plan came into force more than a decade ago and ended with diplomas, converting Nursing into a degree. The current categorization maintains that A2 is for graduates and A1 for the equivalent of graduates, so doctors are assigned there. This increase in category entails not only greater remuneration but also new job functions.
Nurses are not the only ones calling for a review of the categories. The system’s administrators also demand a new category of health administrators, the senior technicians want to advance from level C1 to B and the nursing assistants from C2 to C1.
The Minister of Health insists that they will work with the Public Service to reclassify the health categories as a whole. For his part, the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, announced that there will soon be meetings with professional organizations to discuss this issue.
Nursing has been demanding a requalification for years that does not arrive. But the Catalan professionals have managed, after several days of strike, to get the Minister of Health, Manel Balcells, to commit to taking it to the Ministry of Health, both at the human resources meeting, held last Monday, and at the Interterritorial meeting. from yesterday.
One of the issues in the press conference after the ministry’s meeting with the autonomous communities was the beginning of contacts with the General Directorate of Consumption (now, in the Ministry of Social Rights) to evaluate a possible regulatory framework for beverages. energy. It has not yet been addressed whether its consumption by minors will be prohibited, as Galicia has already advanced, but “they will go accordingly,” explained Javier Padilla.
The PP’s Health Ministers, the majority, showed their discomfort at the fact that the agenda did not include the deficit in human resources in primary care, a paradoxical complaint, since a meeting will be held in the first weeks of January monograph on this point, in which the creation of positions, the streamlining of accreditations by the communities, the flexibility of retirement and new contracts for the MIRs will be put on the table.