About 2,000 professionals are missing to cover the nursing service in the demarcation of Tarragona. This has been confirmed by the vice-president of the Official College of Nurses and Infermers of Tarragona (CODITA), Núria Illamola.
According to data from the World Health Organization, provided by Illamola, the current ratio is 524 nurses per 100,000 inhabitants in the Tarragona and Ebrense regions, while the European average is 827.
After the agreement to call off the indefinite strike, the entity continues to demand that they be administratively recognized as graduates. They also ask for more incentives in the rural areas of Priorat. Terra Alta or Conca de Barberà.
The province of Tarragona is the second area in Catalonia with the highest ratio of nurses per 100,000 inhabitants, after Barcelona, ??according to the Official College of Nurses of Tarragona.
Despite these figures, the vice president of CODITA assures that there are about 2,000 professionals missing to provide quality healthcare service in Camp de Tarragona and Terres de l’Ebre. “We are quite a bit lower in Tarragona, we have about 100 fewer nurses per 100,000 inhabitants,” she asserts.
The lack of personnel adds to the fact that in the next five years 8% of the staff will retire. “We will have even fewer nursing staff,” he laments.
Illamola maintains that the situation of specialist nurses is especially worrying, especially, he emphasizes, midwives. “The generational change is much more pronounced because they are still specialists who need prior training, regardless of the degree, with a two-year residency. The places offered for midwives are low,” he adds.
Apart from the problem of specialists, the rural areas of the Tarragona and Ebrenca regions also suffer from the “lack” of personnel. These are the areas around municipalities such as Cornudella de Montsant, Falset, Montblanc, Camarles or Les Cases d’Alcanar.
“Normally, they have an older, complex chronic patient, who needs a lot of nursing follow-up; nurses follow up on complex chronic patients, almost from primary care, which is one of our highest functions,” says the vice president of the college.
Furthermore, he highlights that in Terres de l’Ebre the problem “gets worse.” “Many of these nurses do not only work in a Primary Care Center (CAP), such as the one in Perelló, but must travel to several CAPs to be able to take on this shortage of nurses in rural areas,” he indicates. Given this problem, Illamolla believes that the Department of Health should expand incentives to make rural areas more attractive.
“In the third agreement it has been contemplated that there be a prize, an extra economic motivation for these rural areas, but regardless of that, I think other strategies should be sought,” he says. Some incentives that could occur, she says, from offering housing, better family balance or a salary increase.
On January 25, the Infermeres de Catalunya union reached an agreement with the Department of Health to call off the indefinite strike, which began in December of last year. Although the strike was ended, the milestone of professional and economic recognition of the A1 was not achieved.
At the moment, nurses are in category A2, although for years they have been graduates and not diploma holders. Formal reclassification depends on the State. However, until this approval arrives, they demand from the Government a salary supplement of between 400 and 600 euros.
Nurses have been fighting for many years to achieve reclassification of the category and, therefore, they indicate that they will continue to demand that they be administratively recognized as graduates.
“There is a lack of institutional recognition, with the third agreement we had hopes and we have not had the recognition we expected; we are acquiring more and more skills and these are justified because since the implementation of Bologna we are graduate nurses,” says Illamolla.
He also criticizes that the Institut Català de la Salut (ICS) exams are not done according to the specialty: “a nurse is considered a generalist nurse that is valid for primary care, pediatrics or a mental unit, when we have these specialties in the Ministry recognized, but not in the administrative field,” he insists.
At the same time, he defends that from the school they work for both public and private sector professionals with the aim of achieving improvements in the field of the profession. “We will always value anything that involves job improvements for nurses as positive, but the work of the professional association must be differentiated from that of the union,” she comments in reference to the union demands obtained.
The person in charge also highlights that they carry out tasks that are not recognized, despite having the skills to carry them out. As an example, she explains, they can monitor sick leave or prescribe health products that are not subject to medical prescription.
“We have the competence to provide care to chronic patients as well as acute patients. I don’t believe that we are doing anything that we are not supposed to do, but that what we do is not sufficiently recognized; this does not mean that we have to replace the doctor” , he maintains. For this reason, he considers that a remodeling of all job categories is necessary.
“I believe that doctors and nurses must stop performing tasks that we can delegate, auxiliary nursing techniques must acquire others within their competencies; and optimize all these categories to the maximum to cover this lack of professionals that we have,” says Illamolla. . And he adds that it is a matter of giving “value to each professional.” Finally, he regrets the grievance that nursing staff have little representation in the management positions of the ICS.
“We are essential figures, when Minister Balcells proposed a bilateral table between the Department of Health and the health system, and all the medical professions were called and we were not, we felt offended, we were excluded and we also see this exclusion reflected in which we had figures who have worked very well, such as Yolanda Lejardi or Montse Gea, and they are no longer there,” denounces Illamolla.
