The pandemic has inevitably left its mark on doctors and nurses, leading to an increasing number of workers who are exhausted by the health emergency they leave the first line of the emergency room. An increasing phenomenon, the result of various factors such as stress and inadequate salaries, which can represent a great problem for the national health system, and which the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza tries to remedy by increasing the amount in the paycheck.
First aid, doctors nowhere to be found: the reasons
In the Budget Law currently being approved in Parliament, 90 million euros of funds were included to finance an indemnity recognized starting from January 2022 to medical staff who will decide to supervise the emergency rooms that are gradually more and more empty (here we talked about the new rules on the appointment of primaries).
The working conditions of health workers are not only made harsh by the long period of the pandemic but comes from several fronts: on the one hand the stress of the health emergency, on the other hand also having to defend themselves from frequent episodes of aggression by relatives and acquaintances of patients.
About 4 thousand doctors and 10 thousand nurses are missing from the appeal, between those who try the path of the internal medicine competition and those who ask for transfer to other departments.
A staff crisis also aggravated by the lack of turnover of the new recruits due to the lack of attractiveness of the unit dedicated to emergencies and urgencies: 40% of places in graduate schools this year remained empty (here we talked about the chaos of the medicine competition).
First aid, unobtainable doctors: here is the ancillary allowance
For this reason, the technicians of the Ministry of Health have inserted an article to be included in the maneuver to recognize “the particular working conditions” of this staff “employees of companies and bodies of the national health service”, through the payment of an allowance that it will depend on the “actual” presence and for this reason it will most likely be linked to the hours of service.
The funds from the national health fund, increased by 2 billion per year for the next three years, will be distributed in 27 million a year for doctors, who are about 10 thousand, and 63 million for nurses, who are about 25 thousand.
The intention is to integrate the new indemnity into the contractual relationship, and then insert it on a permanent basis in the collective agreements.
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