Nurses national emergency, from new degrees to more tasks: here are the measures to relaunch them

A national emergency that has dragged on for years and can no longer be postponed. Appreciated by the citizens and increasingly often graduates, nurses - on the day Florence Nightingale, considered the 'mother' of this profession, was born - demand adequate pay envelopes and managerial roles. The reality of their work is still one of gruelling shifts, low pay and incidents of aggression. Conditions that make young people (especially in the North) flee from a profession that is the backbone of healthcare in hospitals, but also of that on the territory that is struggling to take shape in Community Homes with the funds of the NRP.

A shock therapy is therefore needed, and among the first measures being worked on to try to relaunch this figure is the launch of three new specialised degrees (after the basic three-year degree) that could see the light as early as next academic year and that will train nurses specialising in paediatrics, community care, and emergency care. This is an important step that will open the door to career paths and thus to higher salaries for nurses, who will soon also be able to write the first prescriptions hitherto the prerogative only of doctors, prescribing, for example, dressings, and devices such as catheters. Decreeing this small revolution will be the new decree on specialised degrees that the Ministries of Health and University are currently filing, but also a draft enabling act (expected in the Council of Ministers in June) that will add new skills and career paths for them.

From palliative care to paediatric care, from emergency rooms to RSAs, there are approximately 400 thousand nurses working in Italy. This number is insufficient compared to the need: the shortage is estimated at at least 65 thousand, with critical situations in Sicily and Lombardy. And if, on the one hand, Italy continues to export new graduates, on the other hand it registers a surge of foreign ones. While the unions are protesting, Health Minister Orazio Schillaci emphasises the "need to enhance the role of nurses. It is not just a problem of economic remuneration. We must bring young people to choose this profession'. The issue also enters the political debate with the opposition rising up and calling for 'less words and more deeds'. Providing the picture is the report drawn up by the Federation of Nursing Profession Orders (Fnopi), together with the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, presented yesterday on the occasion of International Nurses' Day, which is celebrated every year on 12 May.

The report shows an Italy "at the bottom of the OECD ranking" for the number of nurses in relation to inhabitants. The annual account data published by the State Accounts Office show a national average of 4.79, exceeded mainly by central-northern regions such as Liguria (6.3), Emilia-Romagna (6.2) and Friuli-Venezia Giulia (6.1). On the contrary, Lombardy (3.5), Sicily (3.5) and Campania (3.6) are at the bottom. Among the causes of the shortage are salaries, which see Italy lagging behind European countries and with a clear difference between the North (where there are more executive nurses) and the South: Trentino-Alto Adige is at the top with an average gross annual salary of 37,204 euros, followed by Emilia (35,857) and Tuscany (35,612). While in Molise it stops at 26,186, in Campania at 27,534 and in Calabria at 29,810.

A situation that does not make one optimistic about the fate of community healthcare with the community nurses (a sort of "family nurse") to be hired to fill the more than 1,400 community homes to be activated by mid-2026 and to get home care off the ground: all the regions have implemented the standard of one community nurse for every 3,000 inhabitants, albeit at different times, but the time needed to reach the target is decidedly variable. If Tuscany envisages full implementation by 2026, the estimated time to reach the target is 4-5 years also in regions such as Emilia-Romagna. On the other hand, to partially fill the gaps come from abroad: there are 43,600 foreign nurses working here, a 47% increase from 2020.