The voice of Córdoba Enrique Castillo, nurse: "A nurse cannot give quality in her care with an excess of patients to attend"

Pay attention to the word ‘ratio’ because throughout this interview you will get out a few times.According to the dictionary, the ratio is the quantified relationship between two magnitudes that reflects its proportion.If we contextualize it to the following lines, we can say that the pandemic has left a number of patients with considerable magnitude and that the quantified relationship with respect to the number of nursing professionals is of a minor magnitude.In fact, considering it 'magnitude' is even generous, as it follows from what Enrique Castillo tells us (Córdoba, 1957), acting president of the Official Nursing College of Córdoba that a few weeks ago presented a decalogue that were the tables ofThe law of the aforementioned ratio, the salary and professional recognition, the university training and the value of the specialties.

Enrique Castillo receives us in the school dependencies, very close to the Calleja de la Flores, which gives the professional health collective a higher degree in Cordobesia and Tourism.You cannot be better located even if the reality of everyday life is another song and nurses emigrate to Spanish promission lands.Castillo tells it with roundness and knowledge of the one who exercises the veteran as the value that is.By the way, the nurse/patient ratio refers to the number of nurses per 100.000 inhabitants.And clarified this, remember that these men and women were those who applauded in March and April 2020 from the balconies when the skin played for all of us.

What has remained of the applause?

The mere applause.When the pandemic arrived it caught all bad, without protective material, something we denounce from school.We decided to act to try to protect our members and all nurses.The number of infected at the time has been growing.The nursing was completely unprotected.There were no media in the province, neither in Andalusia nor nationwide.We have been fighting and asking not only material, but nurses were properly protected, and that the nurse/patient ratio that we have been requesting for a long time is adequate.Are we better now in that regard?No, because it is not established by the Royal Decree Law that is mandatory, throughout the national territory, that there is a minimum nurse ratio/patient close to the European.We don't even ask that it be the same.That implies a nursing saturation.

When the pandemic arrived those applause we received them with love.In fact, in a survey conducted by the Official College of Nursing of Córdoba to the Cordoba population, it gave us a very high note;A 9.09.That means that applause reflected a reality.But we want more than applause.We want nurses not to return to their psychologically saturated houses, to develop their work without anguish.That is why the ratio has to be adapted already.

Nurses and nurses are missing but, nevertheless, there is an important number of professionals who go out of Spain.

Right now that situation has changed quite a lot due to covid.With the pandemia that exit was paralyzed.Some think about it before leaving.The problem is not that they go to France or the United Kingdom, but that they emigrate to other autonomous communities because they make more durable contracts.No precarious contracts of months, but one year renewable contracts.So, anyone who does not have family charges goes to another community, is established in it, remakes their life and then no longer returns.And it is not only that they leave: the Faculty of Nursing of Córdoba, for example, only has 126 future professionals and that does not cover the needs or 1% of the contracts.

Win a Basque nurse more than an Andalusian, right?

Yes.That is another thing we have been denouncing from school.It is incomprehensible that a nurse who performs the same work, with the same tasks, in Andalusia as in the Basque Country or Navarra wins less.This disparity is given by the accessories, not by the base salary, which is established by the State.That is why we demand that salaries be comparable throughout the national territory.

Regarding hiring, the Andalusian Health Service defends that during the pandemic they have had more professionals.

Yes, yo no lo discuto.But we not only want to hire more nurses, but also establish a minimum ratio and that the duration is at least one year, not months.In the labor market also operates the supply and demand.There are communities that offer nursing work with high economic amount and one year old.And people choose.We know that the Andalusian administration is betting on nursing and public health, but in nursing, I insist, you have to establish criteria of a ratio and start working so that wages equal to the entire national territory.

In contrast, socio -health companies of the private sector complain that they cannot compete salaryly with the public offer.And on many occasions they do not find workers for their centers or go to public health as soon as they can.

Yes.The disparity of salaries of nurses who provide their services in private or private concerted with respect to the SAS is quite significant.In collective agreements that have these companies should analyze that situation.They are hiring very trained professionals, university students and who develop the same functions.They should match them.From the school we also ask the SAS that all those who provide their services in private, mutual hospitals, residences of seniors or dialysis centers are told that time worked at least to 0.10 points to be able to integrate into the job stock market,because they provide services to citizens who are in the Andalusian Health Service.

How is nursing responding to this last wave of Covid and how is it professionally affecting him?

I will put a simile to explain it.Imagine that we are on the beach and a wave arrives and tomb us.We get up laughing.A second arrives and throws us again.When the sixth wave arrives, you are already exhausted.That is happening to the infirmary.We are not professionally exhausted because I put my hand in the fire for the more than 4.500 nurses from the province of Córdoba.They are giving everything and more, and I feel very proud to belong to this profession and the professionals that the school has.This sixth wave was known to come.People relaxed with preventive measures.

But people are to blame for infections?

No, the bug has the fault.That's clear.But don't give foot to the bug to spread.We, from the Nursing College of Córdoba, have given the population through the media and social networks a series of caution measures.Masks, socio -health distancing, hand washing, avoid closed environments ... is the health education that we transmit from school.If the population is quite receptive, the infections will not disappear- and omicron is a very contagious strain- but they will be more controlled.I know that we are all tired psychologically by the situation and the time it takes, but we cannot relax.Let's be cautious.This bug lurks behind the door.Hopefully with research and vaccines become endemic and flu, as they say now.Although with this sixth wave the hospitals are not being saturated..

A few weeks ago they presented a decalogue that are actually ten professional claims that they consider fundamental for nursing.Do you fear that when the pandemic passes these claims and some measures that have now been forgotten?

That is what I fear, yes.When that day arrives, and hopefully it is close, we will relax not in the health measures but in the hiring of professionals.And I do not speak only of nurses but of doctors, auxiliaries, wardens or technicians.Is that you have to establish a ratio at once.Forever.It is not imaginable that any municipality reduces the firefighters in winter because there are less fires, the example is worth.In health we must establish an adequate ratio to give care, prevention and health education.A nurse or nurse cannot give quality in their care with an excessive amount of patients to attend.And people cannot be asked not to get sick.

In fact we have seen it.The fifth wave ended, the situation in the hospitals was normalized and the contracts-covid ceased.We do not have the exact number but approximate by the casualties that were solited at school.Some of those professionals, when they called them again at the beginning of the sixth wave, had left to other autonomous communities to work.