One Year Salary Grant for a Nurse Assisting the Terminally Ill

Project location: ITALY, Rome
Project start date: May 2009 - Project end date: April 2010
Project number: 2009-11
Beneficiary: HOSPICE SACRO CUORE

The National Health System reduced, unexpectedly at the end of march 2009 and was applicable as from January, the daily rate for homecare service to terminal patients.
Sacro Cuore was therefore obliged to reduce, among others, the standard of the nursing services in order to meet the new constraint.
In addition to other steps, the number of nurses attached to the 3 wards, in the afternoon and night shifts, was therefore reduced from 6 to 4.
It was essential to employ one more nurse, in the afternoon shift, to improve the in-hospice service and to stand-by on call for the emergencies of the homecare service.
Sacro Cuore asked to the Cooperative Social ASSO spa for Professional Nurses, already supplying the nursing personnel for the 3 hospice wards, to provide one more nurse, from 2pm to 8pm, all year round.
The nursing time of assistance, granted to in-hospice patients, increased by 20%, equivalent to an additional 10min/patient, during the afternoon shift.
The following tables show the Palliative Care activity deployed during the last year in favour of the terminal patients:

Hospice in-patients

Homecare patients

The afternoon emergency calls of the home care nurse were about six hundreds through the year, i.e. 1.6 per day (average).