Nurses too few, and there will be even fewer. A crisis is looming

It's bad, it's going to get worse, the nurses' union argues. A report on the demand for nurses, based on official data, was presented Monday. The shortage of nurses is about 160,000 at the moment, and will worsen by another 100,000 in fifteen years.

The report is in line with recent voices of policymakers and experts, who argue that the staffing crunch in the nursing profession is a thing of the past, as interest in the profession is clearly growing, and nurses who abandoned their PWZs and moved on to other industries are also returning to it. As Krystyna Ptok, chairwoman of the All-Polish Trade Union of Nurses and Midwives, said, although PWZs have about 319,000 nurses, about 216,000 nurses work with patients - with some not in the public system. The ratio of nurses per population is 5.7 - and one of the lowest in Europe. In countries where the responsibilities of nurses are similar and where health systems are efficient and well appreciated by patients, this ratio is twice as high. As Krzysztof Zdobylak stressed, if one were to take these very countries as a benchmark, there should already be more than 370,000 nurses working in Poland. Taking into account the rate of demographic change and the ever-increasing demand for medical services, in 2039 there should be 461 thousand nurses working with patients in Poland. However, there are many indications that the number of nurses working with patients will shrink to less than 200,000 in fifteen years.

- Although we have had about 8,000 nursing graduates a year, and recently about 6,000 - this is not reflected in employment in medical entities, Ptok said. The problem is, among other things, that young students of the profession are sent to hospitals without preparation and after a short time - a few or a dozen months - they resign, moving either to open medicine or to the private sector, or leaving the profession altogether. The lack of supporting professions is also a problem. Krzysztof Zdobylak spoke about this, recalling that in benchmark countries, caregivers or nursing assistants function alongside nurses, and there are - for the most part - as many of them as nurses. - In Poland, the profession of caregiver is a niche profession, the expert said.

- This data confirms what we have been saying for a long time. Activities related to increasing education do not translate into the number of personnel working with patients, Ptok said. As she stressed, the aging of the nursing profession is becoming a growing problem. In 2019, out of 214,000 nurses, 181,000 were of working age, and already in 2023 only 172,000 - We are patching up the system with nurses who are already of retirement age.