Antonio Sbraga
Fear is “90”: to try to stop the great “bleeding” of health workers, increasingly fleeing the emergency room, the Ministry of Health is about to define a new allowance with the allocation of 90 million euros, precisely, for reward doctors and nurses who remain at the forefront. The indemnity is indicated in the package of the Budget Bill that is about to be sent to the Chambers: “Within the framework of the respective national collective labor agreements, within the limits of the gross annual amounts of 27 million euros for medical and 63 million for the staff of the sector, a specific indemnity of an ancillary nature to be recognized on the basis of the actual presence in service with effect from 1 January 2022 “. A measure that, if approved, the trade unions however hope with a clearer application than the so-called “Covid-awards”, which many controversies continue to arouse. As in the Lazio Region, where many health workers “did not receive the compensation provided for exposure to Covid due to regional indications, or health structures, for incomprehensible instructions to health professionals”, denounced the regional manager of the Nursing nursing union. Up, Laura Rita Santoro, in a letter sent to the minister Roberto Speranza and the Lazio governor Nicola Zingaretti.
Recalling “that at least 84% of the positives at Covid, for reasons of service, according to Inail were a nurse!”. But, despite these percentages of infected people, “many health professionals have been forgotten with Covid incentives”. Yet, adds Santoro, “all health professionals have also put their own relatives at risk of Covid: the data cites, not even very well, only the health professionals infected, but no one talks about their relatives”. And among them there are “many colleagues who, despite having contracted Covid for service reasons, mockingly, would not have received any type of Covid incentive, since” someone “has decided that in the” no Covid “departments the staff , despite having inadequate protective devices, he would not have been exposed to Covid », underlines the head of the Nursing Up. Which also reminded the Lazio Region that “outsourced persons, children of a lesser God, or even the victims of the” hiring in health care “have been forgotten. Without forgetting that more than 50% of healthcare in Lazio is entrusted to private individuals who often have agreements with them, while the remaining 50% of public healthcare is managed, for 50%, by outsourced and unstructured personnel. The health workers in service, many of the employees of the private sector, the employees of the nursing homes, the family nurses, the nurses who assist citizens at home were not considered. In the case of outsourced employees, even if they have exercised in Covid units – concludes Santoro – they have not received any type of compensation! “
But not even this announced “transfusion” of 90 million is enough to appease the doctors’ protest: «We find ourselves prostrate and exhausted to continue fighting on two fronts while we face a structural crisis never experienced before. The problems that afflict us are numerous and have not yet received constructive attention “, complain the white coats of the Italian Society of Emergency-Urgency Medicine (Simeu), who will take to the streets in Rome on Wednesday 17 against the” ER and 118 at risk extinction: there are 4,000 doctors and 10,000 fewer nurses than current needs. The loss of professionals has now reached historical maximum levels and today we are very close to decisively compromising the quality of the assistance offered, even worse. Current working conditions do not allow active professionals to have the necessary rest and psycho-physical recovery times ». The doctors of Simeu warn that «the structural and organizational deficiencies currently prevent an effective activity, putting the quality of the service to patients at risk. The shortage of doctors in the emergency services represents an unsustainable risk for the community and requires immediate solutions, also aimed at increasing the attractiveness of this discipline to the new generations “. Also because, already in the pre-Covid era, in Italy there was an emergency every minute and a half, imagine now: “There were approximately 24 million admissions to the emergency room per year, equal to one third of the entire Italian population – concludes Simeu – that is an emergency every 90 seconds ».
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