From medicine to gender health: from nurses the guarantee of quality services
From medicine to gender health: from nurses the guarantee of quality services without gender inequalities, but measured on the needs of the person
Gender health: appeal by the National Federation of Orders of Nursing Professions (FNOPI) which represents 460 thousand nurses in Italy, of which 76.5% are women, with a prevalence in the North (over 83%) and a percentage lower in the South (66.5%).
Appeal to nurses, in compliance with their Code of Ethics, to universities for the training of future nurses, to provincial orders to organize all the initiatives necessary to take care of the needs of assistance and gender health of citizens.
On this theme, the Federation organized in Naples, within the Health Laboratory 20/30 of the Risk Management Forum, the national event “From medicine to gender health in differences – The attentions of the nursing profession”.
The need is to evaluate the influence of biological (defined by sex) and socioeconomic (defined by gender) differences on the state of health and disease of each person: men and women often have different incidence, symptoms and even response to therapies and they have different reactions also on the basis of access to care with relevant gender inequalities. The profession of nurse responds to the personalized needs of the person and not to the pathology, it personalizes the treatments.
On these needs, FNOPI will also involve institutions and Federations of other professions – present in Naples in a round table on the subject – so that there are only quality services in the “uniqueness of gender”.
But be careful: not medicine, but gender health, the Federation clarifies. “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not simply the absence of disease and infirmity” (WHO 1948), while medicine is the science that studies diseases, their treatment and their prevention.
A discipline that helps to reduce inequalities, to concretize a principle of equity, a transversal integration of different skills: personalizing care transcends gender and cares for the person. The new Code of Ethics for Nurses is also clear in this sense: “The Nurse cares and takes care of the assisted person, respecting the dignity, freedom, equality, his life choices and the concept of health and well-being, without any social distinction, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic, religious and cultural. He refrains from any form of discrimination and blame towards all those he meets in his work on him “: the nurse essentially declares not “who” to assist and treat, but “to” assist and treat.
With regard to nurses in particular, the high percentage of professionals-women need, in terms of gender differences, for real professional growth to “break down the cultural barrier that holds them back in coming forward to cover management and management roles. representation in the nursing professions and carry out those work-life reconciliation projects, which often remain only good intentionsPresident Barbara Mangiacavalli said in her opening speech at the meeting.
“In the provincial orders – he continues – it is a male climb and there are few colleagues who engage in professional representation (female presidents do not reach 30%). The reasons are many and culturally must be fought, such as the mistaken belief that a woman cannot manage a family and make a career, or that if she works, she must sacrifice herself by asking for part-time or reduced hours “.
Another reason is the work-life balance: “Often the projects that could help are not put into practice, especially in public administrations – remembers the president – Nursing work is work in shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and hardly can be reconciled with family management without real help. “.
This is why many nurses ask for a reduction in hours. “If before they had to take care of young children – concludes the FNOPI president – now, with the aging of the population, they have to take care of elderly parents: doing a care job, if there is a need in the family, the nurse present ends up intervening. within the family “.
This also increases the shortage of professionals, already more than critical (almost 100 thousand are missing), and there is a risk of fueling the “missed treatments” that regardless of the reason and quality, have a negative side even when gender (according to the broadest definitions) determines fragility (gender, social and psychological status, age, culture …) that is, when a “difference” is seen and experienced as diversity and not as uniqueness.
Nurses know how to deal with the problem: personalization of care transcends gender because it treats the person. This is why the path is clear: respect and non-discrimination; not abandonment; respect for the concept of life, health and well-being, still reads their Code of Ethics. And it is the commitment that emerged from the confrontation in Naples.