site.btaHealth Care Professionals Demand Regulation, Measures to Solve Staffing Problems

The leaderships of the Bulgarian Association of Health Care Professionals (BAHCP), the Bulgarian Association of Assistant Pharmacists (BAAP) and the Bulgarian Association of Physician Assistants and Feldshers (BAPAF) insisted on Tuesday at the BTA National Press Club on the regulation of their professions as well as on urgent measures to solve the staffing problems. Organizations signed an agreement uniting in defense of the professions they represent and expressing readiness for joint action against isolation, inequality in contacts with institutions and against the long-standing lack of adequate and workable solutions in health care to solve the staffing crisis, said BAAP Chair Lilyana Petrova.

There are 35,000 health care professionals, said BAHCP Chair Milka Vasileva. Of these, 22,820 are nurses and in the next few years a third of those now working will be of retirement age, she said. Bulgarian healthcare is collapsing and nurses, midwives and rehabilitation workers are saving the system by working in several places, Vasileva added. The union has drafted the legal documents relevant to the regulation of the profession of health care professionals. "At the moment, the rules are not clear, and that is why we will not fight, but war for the regulation of our professions, for their protection, for clear rules, for the opportunity to work in the best possible way," the BAHCP Chair stressed.

Vasileva pointed out that about 65% of graduating nurses do not work in the health care system.

"Our main problems are related to the lack of constructive dialogue with the institutions and them making decisions for us without listening to us, the lack of a clear formula for postgraduate training, the destruction of the authority of our profession," Petrova said. "In such an environment we cannot expect to have people willing to practice these professions." 

Physician assistants are the successors of paramedics, BAPAF Chair Aleksandar Aleksandrov said, pointing out that together with the other two professional organizations they will defend the rights of physician assistants and paramedics. In the face of physicians' assistants, the State has a hidden potential for a better future of the healthcare system, he added, pointing out that physicians' assistants would have a significant place in schools.

The unions will send an open letter to the President, the Prime Minister and the National Assembly Chair by the end of the day demanding a meeting with them.