Croatia’s biggest medical clinics are lacking nurses.
Croatia’s accession to the EU has further intensified the problem involving the number of nurses leaving Croatia. According to EU standards, the Croatian health care system lacks 12,500 nurses and technicians, while at the same time more than 1,300 of them are registered as unemployed, announced Croatian Trade Union of Nurses and Technicians, reports Poslovni.hr on April 14, 2016.
They warned that the decision by Minister of Health Dario Nakić about prohibiting the employment in health institutions, which was issued in February, was unsustainable. The directive provides for every hiring of a medical nurse to be approved by the Ministry. This means that the system is collapsing, as the two biggest clinical hospital centres in Zagreb need over 1,000 nurses, said Anica Prašnjak, the president of the Trade Union.
Ante Ćorušić, the acting temporary administrator of the Clinical Hospital Centre Zagreb said that his hospital, which is the biggest in Croatia, needs 690 nurses. The Union’s data shows that the situation is similar at the Sestre Milosrdnice Clinical Hospital Centre, where they need 400 nurses in order to meet the standards listed in Regulations on Minimum Requirements in Terms of Space, Staff and Medical Technical Equipment in the Area of Healthcare Activities.
The European average is 703 nurses per 100,000 people and with the current pace of hiring Croatia will reach that average in about 60 years, warned Prašnjak.
Croatia’s accession to the European Union has further intensified the problem of nurses leaving Croatia. According to trade unions, more than 950 of them went abroad during the last year and a half. “The data from the field show that a number of nurses are still seeking accreditation from the professional chambers in order to go abroad”, Prašnjak said.
The Union is, therefore, calling upon the Ministry of Health to make the analysis of the situation in the field of nursing, determine the exact number of employed nurses and create a ten-year strategy for their education and employment.
