Filenews 6 May 2023 - by Marilena Panayi
Cyprus will need health professionals of all specialties, and indeed several, in the coming years, while if efforts are not intensified to attract more young people to nursing schools, the health sector may soon find itself in a difficult position.
From 2021 until today, 28 applications for new hospitals and new health structures have been submitted to the Ministry of Health. Two of these applications have already been approved and the machinery for the construction of two new, and even large, hospitals has been started. At the same time, the Ministry of Health has entered into dialogue with stakeholders to modernize the legislation governing the operation of private hospitals and it is recalled that until recently, the provision of the existing law that provided for the number of midwives that hospitals are required to have depending on their beds, was suspended due to the lack of professionals in this sector.
The voices of protest of the public sector unions against the staffing of SHSO hospitals with nurses are constant, as are the voices of private hospitals that declare themselves unable to properly implement the legislation and the ratio of nurses to beds that it provides, since their staff very easily resigns when the state announces positions for employment in state structures.
In the event that at least some of the applications currently pending at the Ministry of Health are converted into new hospitals, the problem with the adequacy of the number of nurses will be greatly exacerbated in three years' time. It is estimated that in order to meet the needs that are expected to arise in the coming years, Cyprus will need at least 1,000 new nurses.
The operation of new large hospitals does not only require a large number of nurses, since depending on the services offered by a hospital, the needs for other health professionals increase or decrease. If, for example, (in the case of hospitals currently in progress this is true), the hospital has a radiology department, then it will need technical radiologists (radiographs) to operate. If it has a laboratory, it will need chemists, if it has a physiotherapy department, physiotherapists will be needed.
A study is underway at the Ministry of Health, which aims to record current data and assess the needs in general that will arise in the coming years, while at the same time the Ministry's nursing directorate has launched its own campaign in cooperation with the Ministry of Education to inform current high school seniors and choose nursing schools for their studies.
