“Serious situations in terms of safety in the RSA and Covid RSA” are denounced by the president of the Trentino Order of Nurses, Daniel Pedrotti, in a letter sent to the provincial councilor for health, Stefania Segnana.
“With regard to RSA Covid – writes Pedrotti – the undersigned Order does not know that specific nursing and medical standards have been defined to date for the assistance of guests in the acute / sub-acute phase of Covid-19 disease. The quantitative and qualitative standards of healthcare personnel and qualified support must be defined on the basis of the indispensable guiding criterion of the complexity and criticality of the patient’s needs. To consider only the treatment setting as a criterion is misleading ».
The Order of Nurses highlights in particular that: “In the RSA Covid facility in Volano, the alarming reports recently received by the Order lead us to believe that the supply of nurses and doctors is seriously insufficient and therefore dangerous with respect to the needs of guests. Nurses are providing assistance and providing care in conditions that are not acceptable in terms of the safety of the patients and the dignity of our profession.
Specifically, there are 3 nurses on the day shift and 1 on the night shift, both of 12 hours, with the responsibility of assisting 80 acute guests with low, medium and high care intensity (today we learn 60, but always an unacceptable number for one nurse only). Caring for this type of guest, by definition unstable, requires nursing health skills to ensure constant monitoring and support of symptoms that can suddenly worsen, to administer complex therapies, to guarantee presence and surveillance during care activities as the acute phase can determine destabilization of the situation (e.g. during feeding or mobilization) , for devote time to relate to guests who are “alone” deprived of their dearest affections even in the last hours of life, to ensure continuity of care through structured moments of confrontation between professionals “.
Pedrotti therefore expresses councilor Segnana «amazement and regret at the absence of concrete facts, in the face of the letters sent even before the pandemic, which placed, in the exclusive interest of safe and quality health care for guests, the issue of undersized nursing standards in RSAs with related proposals. With the pandemic, the need for nursing and medical health skills has increased exponentially, thanks to the clinical instability of many guests who, in addition to being elderly and frail, are also ill with Covid-19 “.
In conclusion, the Order recalls that “nursing assistance cannot be delegated to any other health professional figure, otherwise it would be configured as abuse of the nursing profession. In light of the above, an urgent intervention is requested to protect the health of the guests “.
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