'Family doctors, yes to reforming Indian nurses now'
From the Trento Festival of Economics, Health Minister Orazio Schillaci defends the reform of family doctors that has aroused so much controversy among the white coats and says he is sure to soon find "an agreement in the interest of citizens, who want a more modern and closer health service". The objective of the decree being studied is to bring doctors 'into the future of the National Health Service, which can only pass through the strengthening of territorial medicine, the one that provides closer services without having to go to the emergency room'. The crux of the matter is the possibility of also opening up to dependency in order to fill the more than one thousand Community Homes that will open by the end of June, even if the point is not the type of working relationship: 'I believe,' the minister emphasises, 'that it is important to find an agreement whereby general practitioners carry out part of their working hours within the Community Homes. This is what the regions have asked for'.
Schillaci also defended some of the latest milestones - 'actions speak louder than words,' he said - achieved in recent weeks: from the mental health plan that had been missing for 13 years to the pandemic plan that 'makes Italia ready to face health emergencies' at a time when the Hantavirus and Ebola frighten the world, both of which are funded. In the meantime, in order to plug the many gaps, he recalls the agreement just signed with India to immediately bring Indian nurses on a fast track: "We are training our nurses of the future, but like many other European countries we also need many social and health workers, which we can take from countries such as India that have a similar type of training to ours.
The minister's words obviously aroused a debate among the speakers, with the president of the Order of Physicians Filippo Anelli calling for 'investing more in healthcare because every euro invested produces 1.8' and rejecting the hypothesis of reform with dependency: 'There is no need, if all 40,000 family doctors will guarantee 4 hours a week for Community Homes as planned, there will be more than enough presence'. While Barbara Mangiacavalli president of the Federazione degli Ordini delle professioni infermieristiche (Federation of Nursing Professions Associations) looks to the future of the profession "enhanced by the new three specialised degree courses", but invites all professions to work as a team, "because it is impossible to do healthcare alone". For Massimo Massetti, director of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences and Cardiac Surgery at the Policlinico Gemelli in Rome, 'the resources are there, as are the personnel, but they must be used better, above all by coordinating the territory with the hospital. Giuseppe Milanese, president of Confcooperative Sanità, also believes that the SSN must be modernised because 'it is useless to continue to mend a dress that is no longer suitable: we need States General of healthcare. We are losing the battle over the elderly population" "Who is there in the territories? Family doctors, family nurses. More than bricks,' Milanese concludes, 'we need forms of enterprise that aggregate these professional skills. Cooperatives allow the valorisation of the professions by responding to the needs of the elderly'.
