Will the nurse be able to write a prescription? - more powers for professionals

In the future, highly qualified health care workers will be able to perform independently, in their own right, activities that could previously only be performed with a medical degree, Péter Takács, Minister of State for Health at the Ministry of Interior, said at a conference on nursing organised at the University of Debrecen (DE) on Tuesday.

Peter Takacs, in his presentation on Changes in the life of professional workers, referred to the government decree published last month, which regulates this area and which will help to better integrate into the care system those highly qualified professionals who have received university-level training and have much more knowledge than they have had so far.

The Secretary of State added that they will be classified by profession as to what they are qualified to do independently based on their own licence number. For example, you no longer need a doctor's seal to prescribe a regularly taken medicine, it can be extended by a qualified professional, he pointed out.

So far, 645 people have received advanced degrees at universities in the country, 552 of whom are still working as advanced practice nurses (APNs) in various fields. The system is cost-effective, improves patient satisfaction and reduces waiting times in hospitals

- listed the benefits.

The State Secretary for Health hopes that the number of people receiving advanced training will accelerate in the coming years as a result of continuous training: Two to three thousand highly qualified professionals would be needed in the care system anyway, but this number could double if ambulance officers are included.

He said he was convinced that with the help of universities, this number could be provided, and that a linear hierarchy of competences could be created from nurse to doctor, which would work as well as it already does in many places, for example in the Nordic countries.

In the Scandinavian model, on average a patient sees a doctor 3-4 times a year, in Hungary it is 12 times. This is because in Scandinavia there is a very extensive system in place, and a lot of diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities have been given to the professionals, which is not yet available here in the Central and Eastern European region, explained Péter Takács.

"We will make a big step in this direction, he added.

In his presentation, the state secretary called the financial appreciation of professional workers an important step.

"A society must be able to express its financial appreciation of professional workers, and government wage measures in recent years have served this purpose".

He pointed out that from 2016 there was a wage catch-up in the health sector and there was a historic scale medical wage increase during the covid, when medical salaries were raised practically suddenly, about threefold, but then the gap between the salaries of professional staff and medical salaries was opened.

There has also been a fairly substantial increase in the salaries of professional staff in the last two years, with an annual resource requirement of 240 billion forints

- he listed. He also pointed out that a pay scale had been set up for professional staff, which would allow for a much more flexible pay scale, recognising the qualifications and additional tasks of the professional staff.

Peter Takács said another important step was to make the profession more attractive, to create a kind of professional challenge for young people. Among other things, the government decree of April, which provides a framework for the activities that can be carried out by professionals in their own right in the health sector, serves this purpose.

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Peter Takács, State Secretary for Health at the Ministry of the Interior MTI/Tamás Purger

Zoltán Szabó, chairman of the DE Clinical Centre, recalled at the meeting that the integration of healthcare in recent years has resulted in the creation of one of Hungary's largest patient care institutions in Debrecen. Every year, more than four million inpatients and outpatients are treated in sixty specialties on more than three thousand beds.

The professor said that the university's Faculty of Health Sciences is at the forefront of nursing education at university level.

He cited as an example the fact that the centre's emergency clinic treated more than 150,000 patients last year, and that highly qualified nurses played a major role in this, alongside doctors.

Mariann Móré, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, said that in addition to knowledge, participants in the extended scope nursing training must have the ability to innovate, the right attitude, autonomy and responsibility.

MTI