It is necessary to hire more than 95,000 professionals to meet European standards, according to the General Nursing Council
Despite the efforts made during the pandemic, Spain is still in the queue in number of nurses. Specifically, it is the seventh European country in the ratio of professionals per 100,000 inhabitants, ahead of countries such as Slovakia, Italy or Hungary but far behind Belgium, Portugal or France, as reported on Tuesday by the General Nursing Council, which has submitted a new report on the historical deficit of professionals in this sector that Spain suffers.
The report indicates that the rate of registered and non-retired nurses is 625 (per 100,000 inhabitants), while the European average is 827 (which is the average of Eurstat, OECD and WHO data). This situation means that in order to meet community standards it would be necessary to hire 95,746 nurses. A year ago, the General Council published a report, with data from 2020, which put the deficit at 110,000 health professionals, so the situation has improved slightly in the last two years but not enough, given that many communities “they have put the hired workers on the street during the pandemic, something incomprehensible”, as criticized by the president of the collegiate organization, Florentino Perez Raya. “And the same thing happens with summer contracts, which are cancelled, with the deficit we have,” he stressed.
The shortage of nurses is motivated by various reasons, including that the Spanish health system has chosen to give preponderance qualitatively and quantitatively to doctors, with rates that exceed the European average. Thus, Spain has 60% nurses and 40% doctors, while countries like Belgium have 85% nurses and 15% doctors and a ratio of 1,824 nurses per 100,000 inhabitants, three times more than Spain. The European average is 70% nurses and 30% doctors.
The law, blocked
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To alleviate this situation and bring the number of nurses closer to what international standards set, in 2019 a popular Legislative Initiative, endorsed by more than 700,000 signatures, which remains blocked through the mechanism of indefinitely extending the deadline for the presentation of amendments. “The law continues to sleep the sleep of the righteous, we do not know why, if there has been pressure from some company because it requires having more staff,” said Pérez Raya.
Likewise, on July 18, the profession organized a large manifestation in Madrid but the Government and the autonomous administrations turn a deaf ear: “It is like crying out in the desert”, in the words of the President of the Council.