The family nurse arrives and the service immediately benefits from the availability of 120 smartphones donated by local companies. The nurses involved are 334 professinists throughout the South East Tuscany Asl (117 Arezzo, 114 Siena and 103 Grosseto). Basically, every citizen who lives in the vast South East area of Tuscany has an assigned “Family and Community Nurse”. The service, after the experimentation of 2020, thus becomes effective.
Who is the Family and Community Nurse
He is a professional responsible for the care processes of the population assigned to him by territorial competence, who seeks to increase control over people’s health. There is one for every 3 thousand people, approximately. It must assess the care needs and “promotes primary, secondary and tertiary prevention interventions, using, in addition to traditional care skills, the helping relationship and therapeutic education as work tools. It orients towards the most appropriate use of services, improves ‘therapeutic adherence, activates specialist nursing consultancy and is responsible for training the caregiver and the reference persons. Collaborates in the elaboration of the best continuity care strategies between the different care settings, hospital, territorial, intermediate care or pallative care “. Basically, an ally in the community network. “But he is not – points out the ASL – the nurse of the family doctor’s office and he is not a nurse who guarantees only technical services. He collaborates with all the interlocutors who insist on the territory entrusted to him, with activities carried out on medical prescription or on autonomous activation for the area of nursing activity and responsibility “.
Comments on the sidelines of the presentation
“We have activated this new organizational model already in 2020 – said the general manager of the ASL Antonio D’Urso – the experimentation, despite the pandemic, was fruitful and the results pushed us towards an acceleration of the extension of the experience to the entire territory of the company. Our ASL is the leader in Tuscany and one of the first in Italy to have started this project. Furthermore, the Relaunch Decree – Pnrr in the “Mission 6: Objective Health” recommends a strong development of territorial care, with dedicated structures (Community Homes, Community Hospitals, Territorial Operational Centers, …) but also with proximity and strengthening networks of the territorial direction of chronic and frailty conditions, giving a mandate to the family and community nurse as one of the cornerstones of the renewal of assistance in the territory. Our goal is to strengthen the social and health network. All these nurses carry out functions that are highly integrated with all professionals and other stakeholders who work for the health of citizens, primarily with family doctors, community doctors, social workers, physiotherapists, continuity care doctors, but also pharmacies, religious institutions, voluntary associations, the neighborhood; all those formal and informal resources that can build a network of support, support and protection on the health needs of a person who lives in the territory entrusted to him. Today with this important and significant donation – concludes D’Urso – for which I thank the Arezzo companies that have proved particularly sensitive (Calcit, Euronics, Chimet spa, Unoaerre, Novart, Zone Creative, Galvanica Formelli, Pm Allarmi), our professionals from the province of Arezzo will each have a smartphone with a dedicated number and will network with the system and the community. We hope to do the same in the other provinces soon. “
“The family and community nurses have been assigned to a specific and delimited territory – he explains Vianella Agostinelli Nursing Director of the nursing and midwifery professions department – taking into account the orographic, demographic, epidemiological characteristics, but also the population density and social characteristics of the territory and the community that inhabits it. We paid the utmost attention to the geographical subdivision so that this was compatible with the presence of the Aft (headquarters of the Associations of General Practitioners) operating in a specific territorial area. This is to facilitate the precious partnership with family doctors. The average ratio of each nurse is 1 for every 3,000 population. This guarantees an adequate and functional proximity to the reference community. The project of the ASL Toscana Sud Est sees family and community nurses as a way of working and assisting, oriented to the individual, his family and the community in which they are inserted “.
“Society changes and with it the welfare needs – he said Giovanni Grasso, president of the Order of Nursing Professions of Arezzo and coordinator of Opi Toscana -. Healthcare systems and professionals are developing various organizational and management models to respond to new future scenarios with clinical-organizational appropriateness and competence. The Family Nurse is a professional figure trained to direct and encourage the family, identifying their health needs and indicating the best way to use health services. The main objectives that the family nurse pursues are to promote and protect the health of the individual and the population throughout the life together with that of reducing the incidence of the most common diseases and accidents, alleviating suffering. that these cause. The role of the family and community nurse is therefore a fundamental role in guaranteeing continuity of care. Thanks to today’s donation, the first event in Italy and I am convinced that there will be many others, the pact between nurse and citizen is ratified, a trust that is placed in the new figure of the family and community nurse as a solution to the answers of need of the citizen “.
.