Nursing Up Romagna Press Release:
Ravenna, 18.03.2024
To the Labor Relations Office Ausl Romagna
Prot. N.Up2024-03(Romagna)
SUBJECT: meeting of 21.03 next on “Management of sudden absences”. Proposals
With this, the O.S. Nursing Up wishes to express its views on the subject in advance, however, that whatever is signed as an agreement between the parties can only be a “temporary palliative” that will not solve the pressing problem of managing sudden absences unless an instrument is adopted, such as an operational instruction or company procedure, that provides continuity and economic sustainability for the inconvenience caused to the personnel involved!
Introduction: It will be necessary to resolve some issues, at various levels of the relevant bargaining, which must address;
• Review of staffing levels: how to quantitatively and qualitatively define the nursing and support staff remains a significant and unresolved problem. Understanding what is the optimal staff, the minimum staff, and the mix of skills to ensure cost-effective care, represents an open issue.
The Emilia Romagna Region has adopted a reform (LR 29/2004) of the regional health system, in fact changing only the form but not the substance of Healthcare, if we continue to talk about nursing care in minutes/patient/day.
The problems arise especially in basic specialties, where it is immediately clear that the daily reality of care is quite different and that the actual care minutes to be dedicated are more than the 120 minutes per patient set by the tables.
Even in the presence of a difficulty in recruiting nursing staff, updating the staffing needs would certainly guarantee better quality of care and less risk to the user.
• Definitive overcoming, and not with “strings and gags” and without any authorization/discretion, for public nurses and other non-medical professionals of the exclusivity constraint, recognizing them the same right already existing for medical staff, to carry out freelance activities.
• Company exclusivity allowance: for all healthcare professionals who decide not to make use of the right specified in the previous point, we ask to assign a "loyalty bonus" (similar to the exclusivity allowance for Medical Management), in order to counteract the exodus of the same to other shores, it is evident to everyone the many resignations of professionals moving from public to private or freelance work.
It is necessary for the region to convene all union actors, whether generalist, category, and/or autonomous but representative unions, it is now clear that listening/confrontation only with some of these provides a myopic vision.
Only through transversal confrontation can maximum sharing of intentions be achieved. Last but not least, systematically investigate organizational well-being, too long forgotten, considering the Directive of the Minister of Public Administration on measures aimed at improving organizational well-being in public administrations (March 24, 2004) and Legislative Decree 81/2008 never properly applied to this issue. Educate managers to respect the person before the worker; to date, levels of harassment and humiliation have been reached that are truly unacceptable.
Therefore, after the long introduction, aware of the availability among the residual contractual funds of €3,700,000, there is the possibility, indeed the need, to make “brave choices” and also considering the meeting between the parties on January 22 last with the overcoming of the hypothesis of activating departmental On-Call Availability.
The current historical moment of little attractiveness towards public healthcare is already known as mentioned above, so it will be a challenge to retain our healthcare professionals and technical operators by implementing an agreement between the parties that provides, obviously on an experimental basis with a set timeframe (2 months April/May 2024?) in order to produce statistics on this phenomenon and also quantify the economic commitment, a dignified economic enhancement as follows;
We take as a starting point the company proposal of January 22 last “Project to enhance the self-management system to guarantee care continuity contextualized to individual Operating Units” to which the undersigned O.S. proposes a counterproposal that is absolutely feasible!
1. An essential cornerstone remains the use of POA for the summer period similarly to what has already been established by the recent national budget law (paragraph 219) just approved and which has provided the possibility to guarantee authorized healthcare professionals an hourly recognition of 60 euros and for which we are awaiting a meeting also with the region.
2. Therefore, the expenditure calculation should be made over 8 months and not over 12 months, which would lead to a recovery on the residuals of about €864,000 to be redistributed on the value of the “call token”!
3. Provide for the daily availability of 1 operator in the approximately 120 identified O.U.s (inclusion criterion: 24h or continuous cycle wards) with an availability time slot from 2:00 pm on the night shift end day (where the operator may only perform a second night shift!) to 2:00 pm the following day!
4. Economic enhancement valued regardless of the call in the presence of service with a “token” equal to an economic amount of €100
5. Hypothetical expenditure commitment calculation; 120 O.U. x 1 SHIFT = 120 shifts per day 120 shifts per day x €100 = €12,000 12,000 x 245 days/year (net of the summer period) = €2,940,000 with a difference of about €312,000 from the amount hypothesized in the slides presented! Amount that, given the availability of residual funds, is absolutely feasible if you want to make this further form of sacrifice attractive to professionals and healthcare and technical operators because that is fundamentally what it is.
To cover increasingly reduced staff!
6. In case of entry into service, the hours worked will be valued, where the requirements exist, as recognized institutional overtime with the increase provided for by the CCNL
awaiting a meeting, best regards
The Head of Nursing Up Romagna
Dr. Gridelli Gianluca
