In 2025 we will celebrate the first hundred years of Royal Decree number 1832 of 1925: the law that established the first “boarding schools for professional nurses” in Italy, to formalize a figure who, until then, had been built on a voluntary basis , spontaneous, regulated in various ways, without any national uniformity. Suffice it to say that in 1902 training schools were active in Italy in only 25 hospitals; in the same years in the United Kingdom there were over 500.
Today, almost a century after that fundamental date not only for Italian nursing, but for assistance in general in our country, the FNOPI (National Federation of Orders of Nursing Professions) has already put in place the cornerstones of what the new nursing training will have to be. Three priorities that will have to find space in the next laws, starting with that of the Budget:
Enhance nursing training and specializations within universities also with greater investments for the fund envisaged to support university teaching and to increase the number of MED/45 professors (those in Nursing, in fact), to make the new training qualitatively sustainable .
Implement the university nursing training course, providing clinical master’s degrees in response to the needs of the health system and the population.
Structurally correlate the places of the qualifying degree course and specialist degrees, adapting them to the needs of the health system.
The Royal Decree of 1925 was the first of many regulations of historical importance concerning nursing in Italy, giving value to the specialized nurse, already defined in the law 1098 of 19 July 1940 for its impact on the quality of assistance and on the reduction of improper access to the hospital. In 1954 the Colleges (now Orders) were established as bodies for the professional, ethical and deontological protection of the profession. Subsequently (1999) the job descriptions were overcome, cages in which an intellectual profession could not find its natural outlets; therefore the degrees and university courses were established, first three-year courses, then also master’s courses followed by research doctorates, academic teaching roles and so on.
Now, for the hundredth anniversary of the birth of nurses’ professional training, the objective – underlines the FNOPI – must be that of a leap in quality: specializations, development of the master’s degree to also allow easier access to the area of ” highly qualified personnel” envisaged by the contract, reorganization of nursing teaching.
Without quality assistance, the mere quantity of operators does not solve the problems of citizens and the NHS, concludes the FNOPI “without qualified nurses there is no health”.
This article is originally published on torino.gaiaitalia.com
