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Tag: nurses
According to daily SME from 30/01/2012 higher salaries of doctors from January 1st will be covered by the Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa (General Health Insurance Company). But the question is how the hospitals will handle further increasing of salaries of doctors and nurses this year. Overall, € 117 million is necessary for the salaries this year. For this, however, Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa does not have enough money, this year it will probably be missing around € 27 million. Insurance company wants to get € 14 million from the stricter pricing of pharmaceuticals and expects that hospitals will help to find € 35 million from more effective procurement of pharmaceuticals and devices. The remaining funds should be supplemented by the private insurance companies.
Nurses and midwives will get financially better from April, as the members of Parliament approved the Act on minimum wages. Average wage claim of nurses and midwives, in comparison with the salary in the first half of last year, will increase by 23,89%. Minister of Health claims that increased expenses on wages should be covered by the combination state budget, as well as internal savings measures.
Increasing of the salaries approved by Parliament could be reportedly more harmful than helpful for nurses and midwives, daily Pravda reports. If hospitals do not have enough money, they will try to save by shifting the nurses to lower positions or they will dismiss them. The chairman of Slovak Trade Union of Health and Human Services warns before such a situation. According to him there is a threat that healthcare institutions will be looking for different ways how to avoid the increasing of salaries of nurses.
According to the Slovak Medical Union of Specialists the outpatient clinics, which are employing highly qualified nurses, will not get any money from Government or from insurance companies for ensuring the compliance with the new Act on minimum wage claims of nurses and midwives. President of the Union considers the Act as conscious, targeted and unconstitutional effort of the Government to eliminate the private clinics.
According to the Vice President of the Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives, the nurses working in social care homes are, against their will, being shifted to the position of social nurse. This measure, according to her, is related to the Act on minimum wage claims of nurses, which from April the 1st increases their wages. Currently is reportedly a difference between the salary of nurse and social nurse only a few euros, but from April the 1st it may be, depending on the number of hours worked, even few hundred euros.
According to the internet edition of daily Pravda from 22/12/2011 also nurses and midwives are threaten with the mass notices. The reason should be the ambition of SDKU (political party) to amend the act on increasing of their salaries with and increase of other healthcare employees's salaries. Nurses, however, do not want to share the resources assigned for increasing of their salaries. They argue that nobody healthcare workers supported them when they had beem fighting for them almost all the year. If the law will be not approved in its "nurses-only" wording, they are resolved, according to the model of doctors, to leave the hospitals.
According to daily Hospodárske noviny from 25/11/2011 the average gross basic wage of nurses is € 482. Midwives earn € 490. Those are the statistics of National Health Information Centre. According to pay scale of Bratislava University Hospital even administrative staff (officers, technicians or librarians) earns more than them. The new draft Act should guarantee them a minimum wage of € 640. This draft is, however, inconvenient for doctors, who say, that they can come to the situation, when nurse will earn more than a doctor. There is also another discontent group – so called lower health care professionals, ergo laboratorians, technicians, sanitarians, etc. Higher wages for them were also not contested yet.
Nurses and midwives should get better from April next year. The government had approved the draft bill on their pay. The average wage of nurses and midwives should be, compared to the first half of this year, increased by 24 % in average. The law applies on nurses and midwives and also on the nurses working in foster homes. Increase of the minimum wage was one of the requirements of nurses and midwives in the petition backed by more than 243 000 citizens. The costs of this change are more than € 77 million for the next year.
According to weekly Zdravotnícke noviny from 3/11/2011 medical trade unionists and doctors have critical comments to the draft law on wages of nurses and midwives. According to them, the intention to guarantee an adequate level of remuneration to only two, albeit very important groups of employees in the sector, is systemless and discriminates the employees of other professions in health care. Slovak Medical Chambre has proposed to withdraw the proposal from the legislative process. Chamber considers unacceptable if there is an isolated claiming by one group of employees.
According to daily SME from 28/10/2011 nurses are likely to become involuntary victims of the war between the Ministry of Health and medical trade unions. One of the scenarios, how to deal with the shortage of doctors, is the merging of hospital departments. In this case beside resigned doctors also nurses will have to leave. According to the president of the Slovak chamber of nurses and midwives, patients and nurses are always hostages of the system. She also declares, that doctors should have, as well as sisters, first negotiate with the Ministry of Health.
