The SATSE union denounces the deficit of professionals in the Region, and emphasizes the situation of an “overloaded” and “exhausted” Primary
“We are saturated, tired, overloaded, with casualties that are not covered.” The Nursing coordinator of the San Andrés (Murcia) health center, Ana Fátima Navarro, summarized this Thursday the state of public health nurses after two years of a pandemic that, according to professionals, has not done but expose the seams of the system. Like Ana Fátima, several dozen nurses gathered at the doors of the center after half past ten in the morning, summoned by the SATSE union, the majority in Nursing. The protest was repeated throughout Spain.
“Our health is leaking” in the face of the “ineffectiveness of administrations and political parties,” cried José Antonio Blaya, general secretary of SATSE in the Region of Murcia. To the “lack of stability” suffered by many workers is added “the permanent overload” and the degradation of the work environment, with an increasing number of aggressions, he denounced. The union demands that the parties unblock the popular legislative initiative (ILP) presented last year in the Congress of Deputies for the approval of a Patient Safety Law that guarantees “adequate ratios” of professionals. The ILP was admitted for processing with a broad consensus, but SATSE denounces that it is still in the drawer. This norm would palliate the current deficit of professionals that all of Spain suffers, but very particularly the Region of Murcia, according to SATSE.
“Spain is in the tail car of the European Union, and in the Region we are even worse,” warned Blaya, who estimated the number of nurses needed to improve ratios in the community at 4,200. “In the Region there are between 2.2 and 2.5 nurses per thousand inhabitants, when in Spain the figure is 4.5, and in Europe 8,” she assured. “In Primary, the medical staff has been increasing, but the same has not happened in Nursing, where we have a 30% deficit if we compare ourselves with the doctors,” elaborated José Miguel Saorín, member of SATSE in Primary Care.
At the San Andrés health center, the fifteen staff nurses have faced “the overload” of the pandemic, with vaccination against Covid and the flu, and antigen tests. “Our consultations have been open all the time, but it is true that we have had to delay the care of chronic patients at times,” warned Ana Fátima Navarro. It has been “two years of continuous tension, first with bewilderment and fear, then with continuous changes in protocols and uncertainty.” To this is added the deterioration of the climate in Primary, “with aggression, insults, with people they are increasingly unnerved.”
The problems also affect Specialized Care, professionals denounce. The protest was also attended by nurses from the nearby Doctor Quesada specialty center. María Teresa Piqueras works in the Traumatology service. “We are two nurses, but we would have to be three many days to meet the demand,” she explained. Nurses also demand the possibility of being able to retire early. “I am 64 years old, at my age a teacher can already retire,” Piqueras complained.