Nursing Student Left Alone: A Sign of Overworked Staff

Today, I read a news report that shocked me. Apparently, in a hospital in Málaga (Spain), a second-grade nursing student was left alone managing all the plant of the digestive unit, and this included 29 beds, some of them with severe cases.

According to this article, the guidelines determine that in this unit should be a minimum of 3 nurses. However, due to the short staffing, they commonly work under the required ratio.

In fact, they noticed this situation when 2 nurses were required to do an emergency endoscopy; at that moment, they noticed that it was the second-grade student who was carrying all the unit alone. As far as I know, and even though I am not a health care professional, short staffing is quite common in nursing, and this is scary.

The regional government of Andalucía (which is responsible for the healthcare system in this region), stated that there was a nurse supervisor in charge of the unit, and that nurse supervisor was also teaching that student. Assuming that this is true, this makes the situation even worse, because the nurse supervisor not only had to take care of all patients, but also had to train the student at the same time. Is it any human able to do this? How many patients ‘ lives were at risk because of this situation?

In my opinion, should increase the number of nurses and, to achieve that, they should improve the working conditions and salaries for nurses. Also, Spain is an attractive country for many foreigners to live, even though the working conditions and salaries are very bad, many people like the weather, food and the vibe. They should use these to attract talent and make it easier to recognise foreign nursing titles in Spain.

Source: Cadena SER (In Spanish)