Nurses and technical healthcare personnel launched an initiative which may lead to serious consequences, as they are busy collecting signatures for a declaration on their readiness to hand in their resignations, said Nurses and Midwives Union chief Monika Kavecká at a protest gathering on Wednesday. They are unhappy with a planned law regulating their salaries and have five demands. Medical workers want the proper financing of medical facilities as well as a law adjusting the salaries of all medical workers regardless of where they work. It shouldn't concern only hospitals as the Health Ministry currently proposes, but also outpatient facilities, spas, health resorts and other social service facilities. There is also a call for maternity leave and sick days to count towards total professional experience, to increase the number of nurses and midwives in the healthcare system, and to show more consideration to staff vis-a-vis the number of years that they have worked.
"For three years nobody has listened to us, and after negotiations that were more of a monologue than a dialogue the Government proposed this bill", said Kavecká. Referring to mass resignations by doctors in 2011 she claims that even a small number of people resigning would lead to the collapse of the health-care system. "The declaration will be a test of health-care employees - whether they're still willing to work in this sewer or whether they're willing to do something in order to change it", asserted chief of the Slovak Nurses and Midwives Chamber Iveta Lazorová. To avoid signing the declaration would mean that medical workers aren't willing to bring about change, she added. The Doctors' unions, which secured legislative salary regulations back in 2011 expressed their support for the protest.
