Nurses: We feel disappointed. We were hoping to open a new era of cooperation

- This opening question of mine reflects well the situation of the civic bill that the nursing and midwifery community submitted to the Polish Parliament," Krystyna Ptok continued. It has been 127 days since the first reading. I would like to emphasize that all the groupings that make up the "October 15 Coalition" declared their support for the civic bill," Krystyna Ptok said.

Nurses present a calendar

It's been 64 days since the appointment of a 9-member extraordinary subcommittee to consider a citizen's bill to amend the law on how to determine the lowest basic salaries of some employees working in medical entities, and 44 days since the subcommittee's only substantive meeting. It took as many as 16 days for the subcommittee to send a proposal with questions about materials to the Minister of Health. It turned out that only one question was eventually formulated: to prepare information on the total number of employees classified in each indicator group. No financial simulations were asked for, no data. The Ministry of Health answered the question in mid-March 2024. And what next? The next two meetings of the Extraordinary Subcommittee scheduled for March 19 and March 21 were canceled without explanation. The next meeting of the Subcommittee is scheduled for April 11 at 9 a.m., which is seven days from now.

- We have a declaration from the President that this is the last meeting. This arouses our sincere surprise. We have no work plan, we have no materials. Also, representatives of other professions have not turned their demands into concrete proposals for changing the law, have not provided any justification, have not provided any financial simulations. Did the navigation blow up? There is no flight plan, sticking to aeronautical comparisons, the Committee representatives pointed out. - The only substantive materials we have are those provided by the Committee: the specific legal provisions of the amended law, the justification and the estimate of the regulatory impact, including financial. We also indicated the sources of funding for our project," they continued.

Highlights of the civic project:

• sorting out the differences in the levels of the lowest salaries between medical professional groups,
• Acceptance of the need to recognize the professional qualifications raised by medics in the course of diploma and postgraduate training,
• Inserting directly into the law the obligation of the National Health Fund to cover the costs of the law's operation to medical entities every year, at a level that will guarantee that each provider obtains funds that will allow the timely and conflict-free implementation of the law's provisions.

An important thread was the so-called pay scale. As the name suggests, the law was supposed to indicate the minimum wage. But the fact is that it usually indicates the maximum rate. - There is no question of a pay scale. Rather, it is about a wage point. Anyway, as we can see, employers resort to various tricks to avoid paying even this "point". They do not recognize the competencies they have, they deliberately lower the required competencies in job descriptions. This does not encourage development, education or entry into the profession," stressed Krystyna Ptok.

The Committee has held hundreds of meetings across Poland with politicians: ministers, deputies, senators from all political parties. Politicians cannot hide behind a lack of knowledge. They have knowledge of the scale of the problems: the number of pending cases in the courts of general jurisdiction, of which there are more than 10,000, the shortage of nurses and midwives, the problems in health care. Unfortunately, they seem to have been frozen, and supposedly the civic project in the freezer is not. There were rhetorical questions addressed to politicians and representatives of all parliamentary groups: have the parties suddenly canceled their support for the civic project? Have they changed their minds? Also, will voters, nurses and their loved ones change their minds when standing at the ballot box in the upcoming elections?

The summary reads: Polish nurses and midwives are concerned about the "landing" of work on the civic project after work without work and dialogue. - We feel disappointed. We hoped for the opening of a new era of cooperation. Meanwhile, everything is heading for disaster...," they added.

Let's use this quote by Prof. Bralczyk as a sad summary: "People generally don't notice us. Even when they notice us, they don't let us speak. When they do let us speak, they don't listen. If they even listen, they don't understand. If they do understand, most often they won't believe. And if they even believe, they won't remember. That's why it's most often in vain to bother."

Source: press mat.