Indian nurses arrive: they will be used to open Community Homes

Italy lacks at least 65,000 nurses. In Europe and also among OECD countries we are among those that have fewer. There is also a shortage of more than doctors because many are going abroad, while fewer and fewer are enrolling for university degrees, mainly because of salaries that are too low. This is why the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci has broken the deadlock by announcing in the very near future. the signing of a protocol with the Indian government to bring nurses from India to Italy: "They will be used to fill the current shortage, especially to launch the territorial health service," said the minister. By 2026, in fact, around 1,400 Community Homes will open thanks to the Pnrr funds, but there is a shortage of healthcare personnel to fill them.

"We have defined the operational details to arrive at the definition of a protocol aimed at bringing Indian nurses to Italy": this was the announcement made by Health Minister Orazio Schillaci at the press conference at the end of the G7 Health Summit in Ancona, after having held a bilateral meeting with the Indian deputy minister who was a guest at the G7. Indian nurses, the minister explained, "will have to learn Italian and for this we are preparing online platforms as well as courses at the university". "We are at the final details," he added, "We have chosen nurses from India because they have quality diplomas that can be recognised by our system. Thus, 'we will soon have an operational protocol that will allow us to fill the current shortage of nurses'.

A plan for more than 30,000 hirings should also be financed in the manoeuvre to deal with the shortage of personnel: 'What is lacking,' added Schillaci, 'are mainly nurses, while doctors will be lacking mainly over the next three years, and this is due to the lack of planning in the past. I believe, however, that nurses will be needed first and foremost in order to fully launch a new territorial medicine'. In fact, the NRP invests about EUR 7 billion for telemedicine, home care, and new facilities in the territory such as the Community Homes and Hospitals that are already opening in all regions and are to be completed by mid-2026. They will provide extra-hospital care: non-urgent care or care for the chronically ill, especially the elderly. Hence the need for nurses also from India, not only for hospitals and RSAs, but also for the new territorial healthcare facilities.

Over the past three years, more than 15 thousand nurses have chosen to leave Italy to go and work abroad. Added to this are the high drop-out rates of the nursing degree course, which affects around 6 thousand students a year. A real haemorrhage that further aggravates the already critical situation in Italy, which today has only 6.4 nurses per thousand inhabitants: in the comparison between the countries that are part of the G7 we are last, followed by the United Kingdom with 8.7 nurses per thousand inhabitants and France with 9.2, and with Canada, the United States, Germany and Japan all above 10 nurses per thousand inhabitants (Japan being first with 12.1). What weighs on the flight from this profession is the salary condition (the salary of a nurse on his or her first assignment is around 1,600 euros), a condition that sees us at the bottom of the pile among the G7 countries: compared to the 39 thousand dollars gross per capita of nurses, the top countries are the United States with 79 thousand dollars, then Germany (59 thousand), Canada (57 thousand), the United Kingdom (47 thousand) and France (42 thousand). A salary, the Italian one, which could however be remunerative for Indian nurses who earn around 300-350 euro per month in their country.