The Court of Lecce with sentence n. 3462/2022 of 06-12-2022 expressed its opinion on a dispute initiated by a nurse, an ASL employee, employed, constantly, without interruption and mainly to perform tasks lower than those of the professional profile to which she belongs and, in fact , corresponding to those of the so-called support staff.
The ASL in question, established in court, replied that the assignments to lower duties had been exceptional and of short duration since it was only an occasional and residual performance with respect to the duties of the qualification.
These assumptions were denied by the witnesses questioned in the course of the case.
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They unanimously confirmed that in practically every shift (morning, afternoon and night), instead of the three nurses foreseen there were almost always two (taking into account the frequent absences due to holidays, illnesses, permits, etc.) and that almost always one of the two he had to leave to accompany patients to the operating room or to another ward (or, more rarely, to another hospital) to carry out tests of various kinds.
So for a good part of the shift, only one nurse remained on the ward.
They also confirmed that there were no OSSs in the ward and, therefore, the nurses on duty had to make up for this lack.
Nurses were therefore called upon to perform direct patient care tasks (including, by way of example: “clean rooms, furnishings, equipment and materials of the ward during the night; make beds and change linen; emptying urine bags (or bags relating to various types of drainage; answering calls via bell from patients (and visiting family members) concerning the so-called hygienic-household-hotel needs of patients; assisting with ambulation, mobilisation, positioning in bed , hygiene care and physiological functions of patients; lifting dependent patients;
perform pre-operative trichotomy (i.e. removal of hair or hair from the incision site) and lavage of the patient; turn on or off the room light; raise and lower the backrest of the bed according to the legitimate needs of the patient; set up trolleys for the personal hygiene of patients; distribute meals; open or close the windows of the room; assist non-autonomous patients in the consumption of meals; open the bottle, fill the glass and hand it to the bedridden (i.e. help them drink); help the dependent patient pick up, put away or answer the phone; turn on, turn off or change the channel of the TV; tidy up the patient’s bedside table; close the cartons containing special waste”).
This was also confirmed by the head nurse of the ward and even by the head physician.
In the opinion of the judge, therefore, the tasks actually performed by the appellant, examined as a whole, fell within those proper to the qualification of general nurse (cat. C), which, “performs the following activity:
A) complete assistance to the patient, particularly with regard to cleaning and feeding operations, rearranging the patient’s bed and nightstand and disinfecting the environment and any other tasks compatible with the qualification in the opinion of the health management;
B) collection of excreta;
C) evacuating, medicated and nourishing enemas, recto-eclysis;
D) therapeutic and medicated baths, frictions;
E) simple dressings and bandages;
F) cleaning, preparation and eventual disinfection of sanitary material;
G) detection and annotation of temperature, pulse and breath;
H) administration of prescribed medicines;
I) hypodermic and intramuscular injections;
L) IV surveillance;
M) artificial respiration, external cardiac massage;
N) emergency hemostatic maneuvers”
specifying that, according to Presidential Decree 225/74,
“The general nurse assists the professional nurse in all of his activities and, on prescription from the doctor, directly carries out the following operations: complete assistance to the patient, particularly with regard to cleaning and feeding operations, rearranging the bed and patient and the disinfection of the environment and any other tasks compatible with the qualification in the opinion of the health management; cleaning, preparation and possible disinfection of sanitary material; IV surveillance; external cardiac massage and emergency hemostatic maneuvers”.
Finally, it decided to accept the claim for compensation for the damage suffered by the appellant as a result of the professional disqualification and, for the purposes of quantification, it considered it appropriate to apply the parameter indicated by the Court of Rome in sentence no. 2587/2022, on the basis of the considerable duration of the demotion, the seriousness of the same and, on the other hand, the simultaneous performance of the duties envisaged by the category to which they belong, which significantly attenuated the negative impact on professional ability by deciding for 15% of the last pay.
NurseTimes editorial team
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