Health, staff and stress: medical alarms in Liguria

Underpowered staff, health constantly at risk, evident difficulties in reconciling work and private life. In the war of the virus, the Liguria of doctors and nurses must be bandaged, like the rest of the country, even if in the North West no one is worse off than us. From 2008 to 2018, the region lost 11.5 percent of doctors (460 units) and 5.9 percent of nurses (631), almost 1,100 fewer precious units in a scenario that has called everyone to deal with the pandemic. The photograph taken by the Fondazione Studi Consulenti del Lavoro of Italy, and of the individual regions, in one of the most critical moments from a health point of view, is merciless but clear, with an emergency to be managed in its second wave in a system that reveals all its frailties.

The reference data used by the foundation constantly monitors the world of work in its specificities and today it focuses on the health front, crosses the tables of the competent ministries analyzing the decade 2008-2018 and updating it in the light of what is happening today. Because there is no doubt that in the last two years the situation has become even more critical due to work overload, emotional stress and structural inefficiencies. It is useless to hide it, the system is fragile and it is even more so if the number of professionals, doctors and nurses in the first place, is reduced. The result is that in the face of the pandemic, people go there with fewer workers and more workload. If we add to this the progressive aging of those in service (28.5 per cent of doctors are over sixty years old), then we understand how everything becomes more complicated. In Europe, only Israel and Spain are worse off than Italy and in the Northern rankings, Liguria is in last place.

According to the report of the Foundation of Labor Consultants, just published, a reversal of the trend is necessary, even more evident in light of the health emergency that doctors and nurses have faced with great self-denial both in the first wave and in the second wave of the pandemic. But the maneuvers to contain health costs, which affected all the regions without obviously saving Liguria, and the blocking of turnover have caused a situation of serious discomfort.

In Liguria still 349 infected and 19 deaths

02 December 2020-

However, the element of further reflection that the report analyzes is that linked to the growing difficulties of reconciling private life and work, while within one’s family the pandemic has also upset the organization of every single day, with children following a teaching at a distance, elderly parents who are more difficult to follow, work rhythms that balance, not always with adequate results, activities in presence and smart working. All of this promotes increasing stress. «The protection of health – explains the report – at the time of Covid sees a profession like the medical one in first place in Italy for contagion risk index. Doctors have the highest figure, 90, followed by nurses, 88 ».
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