Nurses, three new degrees arrive and also the possibility to write prescriptions
The three specialised master's degree courses on intensive care, community care and paediatrics are ready: the aim is to make the profession more attractive by also opening it up to the first nursing prescriptions
The Italian healthcare sector is preparing to welcome three new, long-awaited specialised nurses: we are talking about the family and community nurse expert in primary care to be employed in the Pnrr-funded Community Homes and Hospitals to care especially for the chronically ill and do prevention in the community or in home care knocking on patients' doors, there is also room for the specialist nurse in intensive care and emergency care to be deployed where there are the most critical patients such as operating theatres, intensive care units or emergency rooms, and finally the specialist nurse in neonatal and paediatric care who will be able to work in specialised wards or outpatient clinics in the territory up to paediatric hospitals.
They will be formed by three brand new master's degrees that are finally seeing the light of day after a long processing phase: on 31 December last, the Ministry of Universities and Research submitted to Parliament for the customary opinions on the 'draft ministerial decree containing amendments to the ministerial decree of 8 January 2009, concerning the determination of the classes of master's degrees in the health professions', which introduces the new two-year specialisation courses for nurses with a three-year degree in their pocket, alongside the existing master's degree in nursing sciences, which today trains mainly managerial and top management figures.
The three new degrees in the clinical area that could start as early as next academic year, or more likely from 2027/2028, also open up an important window of opportunity in the development of this profession, which suffers from a serious crisis of attractiveness in Italy (and beyond), where at least 60,000 are lacking: among the skills identified by the three new study paths is the possibility for nurses graduating with a master's degree to be able to write the first prescriptions, currently the prerogative only of doctors.
These would obviously be nursing prescriptions for aids, aids, and technologies related to nurses' care, such as incontinence devices, dressing materials, or ostomy aids, starting with bags and catheters. This is a novelty that has been talked about for some time and that has already caused doctors to turn up their noses in the past, and which in any case will also have to be put down in writing in a regulation that could be included in the reform of the health professions that has just landed in Parliament.
The basic objective of these new degrees is to make this profession attractive again and to convince young people to choose this training pathway more, as Health Minister Orazio Schillaci himself has said on several occasions, since, for example, this year for the first time there were fewer applicants for the three-year nursing degree than there were places available.
