Family and community nurse: what does she do? Who activates the service? Do you go home? Is it paid?

And community nurse who to contact for any health need (expressed or potential), in the clinic or at homewithin the National Health Service, therefore without paying. Just like with the general practitioner. L’family and community nurse (IFeC), a figure introduced in 2020 to enhance territorial assistance, by a State law which allocated specific funds for the recruitment of around 9,600 nurses, or about 8 units for every 50,000 inhabitants, on average one IFeC for every 6,250 users . Last year, then, the Territorial Assistance Reform Decree established that there must be at least one one IFeC for every three thousand inhabitants. But currently how many family and community nurses are there? And what do they do? For the first time, a survey by the National Agency for Regional Health Services (Agenas), carried out between April and June 2021 in collaboration with the nursing managers of the Italian ASL, sheds light. Well, at that date they were just 1,062 IFeC in service in the 14 Regions who participated in the study. Says one of the authors, Lorena Martini, director of the ECM Training Complex Operational Unit of Agenas: The data collected does not differ from those certified by the Court of Auditors in 2021, i.e. 1380 IFeC present in all Regions, therefore far lower than about 9,600 envisaged by the 2020 law, and even further away from the new parameters set in 2022.
To date it is estimated that there are about three thousand family and community nurses in service in the structures of the Health Service, however too few compared to the requirement.