Often presented as a ‘temporary and extraordinary’ situation, demotion ends up becoming routine and healthcare professionals do not know how to protect themselves. To examine legal implications and possible actions to take – we read in a note – Consulcesi Club has created the Guide ‘Demansionamento sul lavoro: guida legale per tutelarsi’, downloadable online, which collects the expertise of its legal consultants who, for years, have been dealing with the issue and receive requests on the subject from Club members. With the constant shortage of healthcare personnel – there are 104 thousand doctors (Anaao Assomed), over 200 thousand nurses (Nursing Up) and 70 thousand social healthcare workers (Migep) missing – to carry out the necessary tasks and guarantee patients the best treatment even in an emergency, the phenomenon has become chronic. The Guide was made available during the webinar ‘Professional demotion: rights and protections for healthcare professionals’ – available on the Consulcei Club website – which saw, among the guests: Silvestro Giannantonio, communications manager of the Federation of Nursing Professions Orders (Fnopi); Francesco Del Rio, Consulcesi Club lawyer; Federico Fontana, occupational psychologist, and Simona Gori, Consulcesi Club manager.
Downgrading is the assignment of a worker to tasks and duties included in a lower classification level than that contained in their individual employment contract. In situations of staff shortages, “health workers, both doctors and nurses – confirms Del Rio – are often called upon to make up for structural deficiencies by carrying out tasks that are incompatible with their professional level. It is a very sensitive problem both in the public and private sectors, if carried out in a prevalent and absorbing manner it can lead to a request for compensation”. Doctors thus make up for purely nursing tasks and, in turn, nurses find themselves performing the functions of social health workers (Oss) in the management of the patient’s hygiene-hotel activities.
It is precisely the target of nursing professions that is most affected by demotion, which represents a major obstacle to that increasingly specialized training for which professional Orders have long been fighting. In the webinar and in the Consulcesi Club Guide, a focus is dedicated to nurses and the consequences of prolonged demotion, a condition that, also from a psychological point of view, has strong effects on the worker. Stress, frustration, anger and burnout syndrome – the note informs – are among the most encountered by occupational psychologists, which the occupational psychologist examined in depth during the webinar.
“Healthcare workers react to demotion with burnout syndrome – explains psychologist Fontana – a manifestation that leads to anxiety, sleep disorders, depression, demotivation, cynicism, as well as gastrointestinal disorders, anger, frustration. The reason is that they work with difficult users, patients. In addition, in difficult organizational contexts, with long shifts, no rest and staff shortages”. These are effects on mental health that also enter the court, when evidence is collected.
In the Guide and in the Consulcesi Club webinar, the steps to follow if you are a victim of demotion, to protect yourself, correctly pre-establishing the elements of proof of damage from professional disqualification. “It is important to provide solid evidence – underlines the lawyer Del Rio – as the damage from demotion is not automatic and its proof must be given with the attachment of precise, serious and agreed presumptions on the quality and quantity of the work activity carried out, the type and nature of the profession covered, the duration of the demotion, the different and new job placement assumed after the disqualification occurred and the requests addressed to superiors for the transfer to more suitable tasks”. For this reason, the differences with the phenomenon of mobbing are also clarified, with a point of attention on how to distinguish the two situations.
“Consulcesi Club – Gori highlights – is designed to meet all the needs of the health professional” and provides its users with unlimited and specialized legal advice not only on demotion, but also on many other issues related to the world of healthcare. “The Consulcesi Club solution – he adds – offers the healthcare professional legal and insurance protection, a catalog of over 300 accredited ECM courses for their training, in-depth content tailored to the individual profession – guides, webinars but also podcasts, videos, ebooks, infographics, to watch and review – resources and agreements to facilitate personal and working life”, in addition to the innovative “‘List of healthcare professionals’, a digital network – Gori concludes – that increases the user’s visibility and creates contacts of high professional value”.
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