Dos desafíos para la Sanidad pública: el mantenimiento de los recursos humanos y la delimitación de la jornada de trabajo

Abstract

Parallel to the updating of the legislation regarding health care workers over recent years —particularly with the appearance of the Framework Statute Act 55/2003, of 16 December—, a progressive insufficiency of the health care resources and certain mutations in health care needs has emerged. A detailed analysis of the measures implemented by the Regional Health Services reveals a lack of legal foresight as regards these changes, which are affecting and transforming the organisation of the public sanitary model.

This article analyses some of the problems arising from the inadequacy of the staff to the health care demand, which the Spanish public health care system is facing. The need for health care workers is due to a combination of a series of factors: loss of human resources, lack of specialists in certain fields, a steady increase in the number of retirements without new replacements being taken on and, also, as the result of the globalisation and migrations of the professionals. That situation is reflected in the distribution of the working week. Undoubtedly, lack of personnel directly effects the organisation of the work time. The legal regulations that seek to harmonise the interests of our National Health System and those who work for the health service (the health care workers) come up against too many obstacles to be implemented; in particular, the way to combine work and rest time.