Employment standards for nurses: The Polish Federation of Hospitals wants changes

According to the regulation in force, medical caregivers employed in hospital wards cannot be taken into account when setting standards. That is why the Polish Federation of Hospitals has 3 proposals which it has addressed to the Ministry of Health.
Proposal 1 assumes that the equivalent of 1 full-time nursing job is 2 full-time positions of medical caregivers - not more than 25% of the working time of all nurses providing services in a given scope at a given service provider.
Currently, the norms are set regardless of the occupancy and condition of patients, per bed, i.e. 0.6 FTE per bed in the conservative ward, 0.7 FTE per bed in the surgical ward.
For various reasons, including epidemiological reasons, seasonality, bed occupancy varies, while the number of nurses employed per day should be in line with the norm, regardless of how many patients are in the ward on a given day.
Proposal 2 assumes the establishment of employment standards according to the following formula:
Number of nursing posts = number of beds x optimal bed occupancy rate (85%) x 0.6/0.7/0.8
Proposal 3 allows for the possibility of determining the number of posts for all conservative beds in a given hospital without division into ranges, i.e. jointly for all wards with a conservative profile. This will enable flexible referral of nurses to a given conservative ward depending on the number of occupied beds. Similarly for treatment beds.
PFSz also gives an example: The Infectious Diseases Department of one of the provincial hospitals has 36 beds, during the pandemic it was 100% occupied, currently the number of occupied beds is 14-29.
Taking into account the proposed changes would have a positive impact on the rational management of scarce human resources.

Source: Polish Federation of Hospitals