Why do nurses desert the Arcuri call?
Commissioner Arcuri has issued a public notice to hire up to 3,000 doctors and 12,000 nurses and health workers with a fixed-term contract. Here are the results
The first shipment of vaccines from the Moderna pharmaceutical company arrived in Italy on Tuesday 12 January. The doses, which will be distributed in 4-5 regions of Italy, are added to those of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine whose administration has already begun.
But if Covid vaccines may no longer be a problem, what is starting to worry is the number of staff engaged in the vaccination campaign. 3,900 responded to the government call for the enrollment of 12,000 nurses. The solution could cost (very) dearly.
Let's go step by step.
THE GOVERNMENT NOTICE
Let's start from the beginning. On 11 December, the extraordinary Commissioner for the emergency Domenico Arcuri issued a public notice to hire, with a fixed-term contract, up to 3,000 doctors and 12,000 nurses and health assistants, to support the vaccine administration campaign in the 1,500 facilities distributed on throughout the national territory.
THE RESPONSE OF DOCTORS AND NURSES
However, over four times the number of doctors required and less than a third of the nurses required responded to the ban. According to what was written by Agi , 14,800 doctors have made themselves available to vaccinate, while nurses are only 3,900, according to the questions received so far.
COSTS HIGHER THAN THOSE EXPECTED?
The range of responses to the call for proposals suggests higher costs than those foreseen, ie the 534 million allocated by the Budget Law to pay the nine-month contract. The compensation of doctors is more than double that of nurses.
MORE THAN 60,000 FREELANCE NURSES
Yet there is no shortage of nurses in Italy. The National Federation of Orders of Nursing Professions (Fnopi) has over 60 million freelance nurses who "meet the requirements of the notice of the extraordinary Commissioner for Covid-19" and who are "on stand by because not being employees they have not received any priority in being vaccinated themselves and therefore are exposed to the maximum risk of infection without protection ".
THE REQUESTS OF PROFESSIONAL NURSES
And it is in the name of these nurses that Fnopi sent a letter-appeal to the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, to the Ministries of Health and Regional Affairs Roberto Speranza and Francesco Boccia, to Commissioner Domenico Arcuri and to the President of the Regions Stefanio Bonaccini.
In the letter, we read on the website of the Federation , Fnopi asks that freelancers "be considered as their fellow employees among the staff to be subjected as soon as possible and as a priority to the vaccination campaign and also asks that they be recognized a similar reward to that recognized for dependent nurses ".
The van arrived at the Spallanzani in Rome around noon.
FIALS: WE NEED REAL PROPOSALS
For Giuseppe Carbone, general secretary of Fials, the autonomous Italian federation of health workers , “it is not that nurses desert the Arcuri call, but they are simply not there, also because of the training funnel. And those who are there are tired of being treated like Serie B professionals, ”says Carbone. “Without prejudice to the real need to recruit nurses and hire them with non-precarious contracts given the past shortage of tens of thousands of nurses in the National Health Service, real proposals are needed. Especially since we receive reports from the territories of nurses who have made themselves available to the companies they belong to to participate in the campaign, but no one responds to them, ”adds Carbone.
THE ARRIVAL OF MODERN VIALS
What is certain is that the recruitment of personnel needs to accelerate. Italy can count on an important number of anti Covid vaccine vials to carry out the vaccination campaign in recent weeks. To the vaccine doses of Pfizer-Biontech, in fact, also those of Moderna are added.
Today, 12 January, a little after 2 am Moderna's vaccine van crossed the Brenner Pass and arrived at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Iss) in Rome at around noon. The vials will be distributed in 4-5 regions, through the SDA courier of Poste Italiane.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/perche-gli-infermieri-disertano-il-bando-di-arcuri/ on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 15:26:35 +0000.