Lack of nurses, age structure, retirement and lack of interest of young people in this profession are becoming a significant problem not only abroad but also in Slovakia. In 2004 we had an average of 6.7 sisters per 1000 inhabitants in Slovakia, four years later it was 6.28 sisters per 1000 inhabitants, in 2016 only 5.74 sisters per 1000 inhabitants and in 2022 we reached 5.4 sisters per 1000 inhabitants. However, the European Union average is 8.1 nurses per 1000 inhabitants. If we want health at the EU average, we must say that we lack about 15 thousand sisters in the system.
Europe's developed countries concentrate long-term and chronic care in the home environment, have a wide network of hospices, home nursing agencies and nursing homes. In our circumstances, 24-hour care is often provided mainly by immediate family relatives. Help ADOS or mobile hospices is only for special performances, not continuously. We are aware of these problems, which is why the whole one component in the Recovery and Resilience Plan deals with the issue of long-term care.
The reason why Slovakia has recorded such a high shortage of sisters is a few years old structure, change of educational standard or labour migration. –For this reason, too, the motivation of nurses in the near future will require our special attention, as keeping nurses in the health system will be reflected in providing quality nursing care. That is also why we started preparing changes in legislation, personnel standardization, financial evaluation, improvement of working conditions of nurses and related attractiveness of the profession, and said Vladimír Lengvarský, Minister of Health of the Slovak Republic.
At the beginning of May this year Lenka Dunajová Družkovská, State Secretary of the Department, participated in bilateral negotiations at the Ministry of Health in the Czech Republic. The Czech colleagues themselves have confirmed that they have been helped to stabilise their sister staff by raising wages and strategic material dealing with human resources in the health sector. As a positive point, they stated that these strategy papers are adopted at national level, and regardless of the political atmosphere in the country, the Ministry follows these documents. So the goal is clearly defined and for all the same, explained the State Secretary Dunajová Družkovská. As the topic of staff stabilisation has been neglected in the past governments in the ministry for a long time, the department has not yet produced a strategic document focusing on the area of
Not only on the basis of these findings, but also on the basis of individual constitutional health institutions, the Ministry of Health has started to work intensively on the National Strategy for the Management and Stabilisation of Human Resources in Health, which in the long term is absent in Slovakia. The new strategy proposal, with a view to the next minimum of 10 years, will be drawn up in the light of the current shortcomings and findings in terms of human resources management in the health sector. Not only representatives of the resort, professional companies and leading experts, but also experts from the self-governing regions will be involved in its work.
At the same time, the Ministry is aware that such a strategy document cannot be produced from the table. To do so, we need to meet doctors, nurses, midwives, and paramedics directly in hospitals and in the field. The Ministry's proposals with which it comes to dealings with partners in the government must be compatible with the measures already in place in individual hospitals, said Lenka Dunajová Družkovská, State Secretary of the Resort.
She added that it is necessary and correct to incorporate examples of good practice into the strategy. –We are well aware that in the negotiations on the additional funding and improvement of the value of health workers, it is our job not only to ask for funding but also to bring forward proposals for systemic and sustainable solutions, "Vladimír Lengvarský, Minister for Health," added..
He therefore presented the main objectives of the resort to the partners. These short-term are the increase in the salaries of nurses for the rapid stabilisation of staff, i.e. the increase in coefficients, but also systemic measures in terms of student subsidy, contributions to graduates' wages, return to the birthplace, adaptation language preparation, mentoring allowance, entry lump sum grant, support for lifelong learning, etc. Within the medium-term objectives, he referred to a change in the image of the nurse's permit, as well as a change in the financing of health and working conditions. As a long-term objective, based on the National Strategy for the Management and Stabilisation of Human Resources in Health, the Ministry has established a more detailed definition and reallocation of competences, the establishment of staff regulations and the improvement of the learning processes.
These goals will help us not only strategic documents, change funding, but also recovery and resilience plan of the Slovak Republic and reforms related to it, but also optimization of the network of hospitals, emergency health services, home long-term care, but also outpatient care.