Nurses at the Algarve Local Health Unit (ULS) are overworked due to a lack of around 1500 nurses. The union blame the administration for the deterioration of working conditions and the consequent implications for the safety of the care provided.
“We estimate that there is a shortage of 1,500 nurses in the region, according to the Safe Staffing Regulations of the Portuguese Nurses Association. The shortage of nurses has worsened in recent years, with direct implications for the quality and safety of care provided to the population and for the physical and mental health of nurses,” the Portuguese Nurses Union (SEP) reported in a statement.
The lack of professionals and the work overload to which nurses working at the ULS in the Algarve, which manages the hospitals in Faro, Portimão and Lagos and basic emergency services in the region, are subjected could lead them “to ask for an exemption from responsibility”, warned the nurses union.
If the nurses ask to be excused from responsibility, it will be the ULS administration and, “ultimately, the Ministry of Health” that will be held responsible for the “absence of measures to minimize the problem”, said SEP.
“It is common for nurses to have to work shifts to cover for others who, due to health problems, have had to justifiably take sick leave,” the union explained.
A SEP representative mentioned just one of many examples of a ULS professional, who said she started work at 8:00 am and then worked the afternoon shift (4:00 pm-12:00 am), returning to work the following morning, “with minimal rest”.
As the situation is “recurrent”, nurses feel the impact of work overload on their health and are faced with a situation that places them in the position of having to, with five nurses, “provide care to 40 patients, the majority of whom have high levels of dependency”, without being able to “guarantee dignity and safety”.
The SEP compared the ratio predicted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is 9 nurses for every 1000 inhabitants, with that of Portugal being 7.9 nurses per 1000 inhabitants, and with that of the ULS Algarve, which has “only 4.8 nurses for every 1000 inhabitants”.
There are services at the Algarve ULS where “there should be 11 nurses in a morning” and “there are only 7 to 8”, with the number of 11 “already being below the Safe Staffing”, and there are situations in which “five nurses provided care to 40 hospitalized patients”, added the union.
The SEP highlighted that, “in the afternoon and night shifts, these ratios are even more worrying” and regretted the “lack of material resources essential to professional practice”, which causes “a strong impact on the provision of care, on the dignity of patients and on the ethical and legal responsibility of nurses”.
The nurses at the ULS in the Algarve “refuse to trivialise the risk of error due to excessive work and poor conditions”, but they reject being “accomplices in the deterioration” of the National Health Service and “refuse to work in conditions that also violate the principles of safety, quality and professional dignity” which, according to the union, the hospital administration is not managing to ensure.
