Mangiacavalli (Fnopi): "The nursing shortage involves several institutions"

'Make the practice of the profession attractive with incentives and career development'

"It is a major problem that we have been dragging along for many decades and for which stopgap measures have always been adopted. The issue of the nursing shortage is becoming the issue of the country. More than just a shortage, I would speak of a nursing issue because it affects multiple levels and multiple institutions". We need to "ensure that the 25 thousand young people who choose to take a degree course in Nursing every year are also helped to discover the true essence of this profession. So much so that many young people drop out during their studies. Nursing in itself is attractive, but we need to ensure that practicing the profession also remains attractive". It is a matter of "working on the valorization of specialist skills, working on career development and recognition and on some incentives to ensure that young people can study nursing in the contexts in which they live or, if they move, also be facilitated in moving for study". Thus Barbara Mangiacavalli, president of Fnopi, National Federation of Nursing Professions, to Adnkronos Salute, speaking on a key issue in the sector, on the sidelines of the presentation of the first report on nursing professions, today in Rome.

"Having a structured, documented, data report" on the nursing reality is a goal "that I have been pursuing since I became national president - adds Mangiacavalli - This is the first, but the goal" is to make it "annual". It must become "a report that every year photographs the nursing profession, that contains data for political and institutional decision makers: from training to career development, to staff, to accreditation standards, to the valorization of the profession". It must contain the "information that can, together with us as an organization, help politics in implementing legislative or regulatory interventions that are needed". The data holders "are the Orders and the Federation, as an entity and subsidiary of the State - explains Mangiacavalli - With this report, where we also availed ourselves of the fundamental methodological contribution of the Scuola Sant'Anna of Pisa, we began to collect data from the National Register", to which were added those "of the national databases of the Minister of Health, that of the General Accounting Office of the State and of the Court of Auditors. Then there are the databases of the Regions. Data were also collected from patient associations, from scientific societies. Then there are those obtained from the nurses themselves with a survey. The sources of the data are multiple and the ability of the Scuola Sant'Anna is that of having created a connection between the data to transform the data into information", he concludes.