(ANSA) – ANCONA, OCTOBER 19 – “We deluded ourselves that the serious staffing and organizational shortcomings highlighted by the Covid emergency could finally be overcome. The recent cases of violence against healthcare workers are going from a deplorable exception to a sad one custom and is the result of organizational models that have never been implemented”. This is what Giuseppino Conti, President of Opi Ancona, stated when opening the proceedings of the meeting “From Burnout to the valorization of the nurse: how to change the present of a profession that needs a new future” organized by the Order of Nursing Professions of Ancona. Conti underlined that “the perception of the citizen-patient is of poor assistance, long waiting lists, inadequate services without realizing that it is not the healthcare workers, nurses first and foremost, who are responsible for the disservice, but rather they are the first victims of a system that needs to be rethought”. For this reason he considers it “urgent to activate family and community nurses in compliance with an organizational model that provides for these figures and which however have not yet been activated”.
After the institutional greetings coordinated by prof. Sandro Ortolani of the degree course in Nursing Sciences and edited by Dino Latini, President of the Regional Council, Giovanni Zinni, deputy mayor of Ancona, Emilia Prospero of the Polytechnic University of Marche, Silvia Di Giuseppe vice-president of the Order of Psychologists of Marche followed the comparison in the presence of Barbara Mangiacavalli, President of the National Federation of Nursing Professions Orders.
The picture that emerged is very clear with “the lack of 65 thousand nurses in Italy, around 460 thousand in service in Italy but of these around 30 thousand have chosen to work abroad and with 60% of nurses declaring they feel persistent chronic stress, precisely burnout, the theme at the center of the event”. The reasons are attributable to various factors ranging “from economic aspects and the difficulty of salary progression, to organizational ones, to welfare which influences professional choices and which makes it difficult to reconcile the working life – personal life system also remembering that the 78% of nurses are women.”
Italy, it has been reiterated, is the second oldest country after Japan and is experiencing a substantial demographic ice age which in 2022 saw the minimum number of births since 1861 and a heterogeneous situation between the regions with Campania being the most young and the older Liguria and the Marche not far from the record. In this context comes the crisis of the shortage of nurses which must be urgently addressed. “I wonder – said Mangiacavalli – whether it is not appropriate to ask for the appointment of an Extraordinary Commissioner for the nursing shortage so that, by providing him with extraordinary powers, we avoid having no more nurses in service in Italy in a few years”.
The discussion continued with the interventions of Maria Rita Parsi, Psychologist and Psychotherapist, Luigina Mortari, Full Professor of Epistemology of Qualitative Research and Phenomenology of Care and Maurizio Mercuri, Director of Professional Training Activities of the Degree Course in Nursing. Then the further reflection on the legal-regulatory aspects with the lawyer. Marcello Marcellini and Marcello Bozzi vice president of Opi Ancona. Also present was MEP Carlo Ciccioli. (HANDLE).