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Date Published: 29/10/2024

The Region of Murcia is short by 6,000 nurses to reach European average

The general council for nursing has indicated in a report that the number is falling short of what is needed in the Region

The General Council of Nursing (CGE) has indicated in a report that the Region of Murcia needs around 6,000 nurses to reach the average number of professionals per inhabitant that European countries have.

A study indicates that the Region would need around 6,000 more nurses to reach the average nurse/patient ratio in Europe, where the average is eight or nine nurses per 1,000 inhabitants.

The president of the GCE, Florentino Pérez Raya, stated, "The war on the shortage of nurses has existed for years in our country, with great inequalities between autonomous communities. We are light years away from nations around us."

The study reflects the figures for the profession in Spain in 2023, including data on the number of nurses in relation to the population by communities and provinces, and the need for nurses to reach the average of the data available in European countries.

Spain as a whole needs around 123,000 nurses to reach the average number of professionals per inhabitant in European countries, a figure that has increased compared to the previous available data, when it was established that 95,000 were needed.

According to the study, there are 345,000 nurses in Spain, of which 77% work in hospitals, 19% in primary care, 1.8% in specialised training and 1.5% in emergency and urgent care.

The document indicates that Spain has a ratio of 6.3 nurses per thousand inhabitants, while at European level the ratio is 8.83 nurses per thousand inhabitants.

With this data, the CGE considers that 122,993 nurses are needed, 40 percent more than the 345,000 currently in Spain. The secretary general of the General Nursing Council, Diego Ayuso stated, "Our country is in sixth place from the bottom of the 21 EU countries. There are places like Norway (ratio 21.68), Austria or Iceland that triple the number of professionals compared to Spain."

In the data by autonomous communities, Navarra is the only region in Spain that exceeds the European Union average with a ratio of 8.87 nurses per thousand inhabitants, followed by the Basque Country (8.01), Castilla y León and Melilla (both with 7.35) and the Canary Islands (7.32). On the other hand, the communities with the lowest ratio are Murcia (4.8), Galicia (5.13), Valencian Community (5.49) and Andalucía (5.52).

"There is a worrying disparity between the different autonomous communities and provinces, which causes inequalities in the health system, giving rise to first- and second-class citizens depending on the nursing resources available to them. This is putting patient safety at risk, as numerous studies have shown that caring for an excessive number of patients increases the risk of mortality and morbidity. But not only that, it also affects the mental health of nurses themselves," Pérez Raya stressed.

Retirement, job insecurity and brain drain

For the CGE, reversing this problem involves "investing in nurses, providing more training, creating new places in universities, retaining talent and recovering professionals who have gone abroad".

"These are not short-term solutions, but we must start planning them now, given that in the next ten years almost 50,000 nurses will retire throughout Spain, 10,000 of them in Andalucía alone, which will aggravate the problem," Ayuso said.

At this point, the coordinator of the Nursing Institute, Guadalupe Fontán, has pointed out that 43,871 people requested to begin their Nursing degree studies during the 2023/2024 academic year. "Only 10,532 were successful, there were no places available. As we can see, the problem is not one of demand, but of supply, which is insufficient," Fontán pointed out.

The General Nursing Council has also highlighted that another of the main problems is the precarious employment suffered by professionals. The number of contracts has been increasing, but the number of people hired is lower than the number of contracts. This is because the same person has many short-term contracts over the years.

According to the CGE, this job insecurity is causing many professionals to go abroad to work. They point out that during 2023, some 1,473 Spanish nurses requested documentation to go abroad.

"Fourteen per cent of the patients who graduate do not want to work in our country," Ayuso said, explaining that this is because "in Spain they do not have good working conditions, contracts are made for days and months, while abroad they are permanent contracts."

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