The plenary of Nursing Schools, which brings together private institutions that teach this profession, calls on the Administration of State Health Services (ASSE) to enable the return of students to carry out clinical practices in hospitals, a measure that was suspended due to the pandemic but was not resumed despite the end of the health emergency.
In a document that they circulated in recent weeks, the plenary party states that the situation covers more than three thousand students who are waiting to obtain a “clinical field where they can carry out their practices.”
“Nursing training is substantially affected, although it also covers sectors such as hospital pharmacy, medical records and hospital hygiene or herbal medicine,” says the text.
as he learned The Observerrepresentatives of the plenary held a meeting last week with the ASSE authorities in which progress was made on a possible solution, which means that each public hospital is the one that can regularize the situation with the educational institutions directly.
Given the outbreak of the pandemic, ASSE suspended practices to prevent further spread of the coronavirus through non-essential personnel moving around hospitals, but the situation did not return to normal once the health emergency was lifted.
The search for solutions and the negotiation with the nursing schools had fallen to the deputy of the general management of ASSE, Inés Lavega, indicated by the institutions as the person responsible for the few advances.
“For more than 30 years the ASSE/Nursing Schools pairing has been in good health, and this relationship crisis will cost the health of Uruguayans dearly if there is no immediate solution,” the document underlines.
In turn, it highlights that the training of these human resources at the national level is in the hands of 50 nursing schools, whose regulation depends on a specialized office of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
The difficulties due to the lack of progress were discussed at the end of January in a meeting convened in a “serious and urgent” manner by the plenary, in which the schools Arte y Ciencia, Cecas, Humanizar, Canaria, Santa María, Colón, Blanco Acevedo, Madame Curie, Río Negro, Treinta y Tres, Antares, ENE, Católicas, Edupromer and Montevideo, in which the technical directors and representatives of the academy pointed out the “difficulties” and their “concern” about the “danger of deterioration of future training and care quality” that this “absolutely unjustifiable” delay in awarding clinical fields will entail.
Reuters
In Uruguay there is a lack of nurses in hospitals
Nursing students have been claiming this situation since the end of 2021 and have even held marches to the Executive Tower in which they denounced that they have practices with plastic dolls and questioned the lack of responses from public bodies.
The situation is similar in the public sector. This Monday, the dean of the Faculty of Nursing told La Diaria that he was “very concerned” about the existing lag and the increase in the number of students, something that is necessary, but for which the budget is not enough.
“If this year’s enrollment continues to grow, surely we are going to have problems. And we already started the year with a budget deficit, ”he said.
According to data from the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) for the year 2021, in Uruguay there are some 34,463 people who make up the nursing staff, which represents just over 30% of all health personnel.
Of the total, only 6,731 are graduates, while 27,732 are assistants. Minister Daniel Salinas described this difference as “a disproportionate pyramid” with respect to the world, due to the “large number” of doctors and assistants and the “deficit” of graduates or nurses.
