Elena is a nurse, she is on leave due to depression and anxiety and prefers that her real name not be published because people “don’t understand it”. He does not understand, he says, that after two years of the pandemic one day he put on his protective equipment and had an anxiety attack, that he needs medication to get ahead and that he has decided to leave his profession if he finds a job “in Mercadona or El English court”. Elena’s case is not unusual. Two-thirds of nurses have experienced severe episodes of anxiety during the pandemic; one third, depression; Almost half have considered the possibility of abandoning the profession and 3 out of 10 would not study for a degree again.
These are data from a macro-survey by the General Nursing Council (CGE) that is published this Monday and to which EL PAÍS has had access. It has surveyed 19,300 professionals to quantify and learn about the impact generated by covid among the 275,000 active nurses who work in public and private health centers throughout Spain. It was a consultation through email, so it is not a randomized sample and may contain certain biases.
The covid has meant for many professionals (the union calls itself in feminine) the last straw to years of precariousness in a country with one of the lowest ratios of nurses per inhabitant in Europe. Contracts for days, even for hours, are the norm for a union that feels “invisible”, in the words of María Monguilot, a nurse from Navarra who during the pandemic has even had one and a half hour contracts in a health center. “After so much time on the front line, the atmosphere is one of tiredness, boredom, in addition to the fact that many of us have suffered from the disease,” she says.
The survey shows that half of the professionals (48%) have suffered from covid and that 14.5% have been infected more than once. All this weariness and discouragement are reflected in the CGE survey: 62.8% of those who have the possibility of retiring have already thought about doing so, even if this means a significant reduction in their pension. In absolute terms, this translates into some 15,000 professionals who could lose a system in which there are not too many.
The pandemic has absorbed them. 79.3% assure that their health care has to do with covid patients to a greater or lesser extent at the end of each day: 27.1% dedicate themselves practically completely.
This is the case of Elena, who began to suffer serious episodes of anxiety when she was redeployed to the covid floor of a hospital in Córdoba. She assures that she had a vocation and that she has always loved her profession, but today she does not want to know anything about it. “People say to me: ‘But what a good nurse you are!’ Well, I won’t be that good,” she replies. This professional believes that nursing was not respected before the pandemic: “When it all started, it seemed that it was going to give us a little recognition. But the opposite has happened. People treat us worse now than before. I have even called a family to tell them that her relative has died in a covid plant and they have called me a murderer ”.
A female boss even told her that if she felt bad, she should take an anxiolytic to go to work, something that, she knows, many of her colleagues do daily without any type of medical prescription. “It seems that, since we are nurses, we can self-medicate and endure everything. But I couldn’t take it anymore”, she confesses.
Practically all of those surveyed (98.7%) reported that they neither feel recognized by politicians nor do they trust that they will provide solutions, and 9 out of 10 consider it necessary to mobilize to solve problems such as work overload, physical and mental exhaustion. , working conditions and professional recognition.
The president of the CGE, Florentino Pérez Raya, regrets that neither the Administration nor the political leaders have the voice and experience of nursing, “which weakens planning in the health system”, and assures that in the coming weeks they will leave to produce “unprecedented mobilizations”. “Nurses can no longer stand the stress, or the lack of job stability, or the tripping up in their professional development, or the indifference of politicians. It is unacceptable and in the end, with problems entrenched for so many years, you come to think of some professionals who are the backbone of the health system”, he maintains.
The Decalogue of Nursing Claims
The CGE proposes a decalogue of claims to the health authorities:
- More professionals to reach at least the European average of 864 nurses per 100,000 inhabitants, 248 more than Spain has.
- That the Administration recognizes the professional group A1, for which it is required to have a bachelor’s degree (nursing was studied with a diploma) and gives access to higher level functions.
- “Decent” conditions. They denounce a high temporality, with ephemeral contracts that imply a displacement to “kilometric distances” of one day under penalty of passing to the end of the job market.
- Promote the real development of nursing specialties, which are not recognized in many autonomous communities despite their approval in 2005.
- A Primary Care that has a number of professionals proportional to the needs of society. According to the CGE, these nurses must work closely with the community and the family, developing preventive and health education work.
- Better conditions in the social and health field (residences) and commitment to the figure of the specialist nurse in geriatrics to coordinate care for the elderly and dependents.
- Nurses in all schools, not only to attend to emergencies, but also to promote prevention and health education.
- New contracts in the universities before the retirement of the professors.
- That nurses are in positions of management and responsibility in health centers.
- More voice in political decision-making to strengthen planning in the health system.
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