In a recent interview with BlogSicilia.it, University of Palermo Professor Domenica Matranga, a medical statistician and researcher at Project METEOR, discussed shortages of healthcare workers and the challenges of retention in light of the project’s recent findings.
“We sought to understand what the determinants of leaving hospital jobs are, and we interviewed around 1,400 nurses and around 400 doctors in the four countries,” Matranga told the key regional news website. “Several structural weaknesses contribute to the problem, especially disproportionate workload and task assignments not aligned with professionals’ skills due to staff shortages in many departments.”
Data gathered by METEOR shows that in Italy, 19% of doctors and 8% of nurses intend to leave their hospitals, and the issue is most dire in areas such as smaller islandsand Sicily. Other countries are also grappling with healthcare worker shortages and the retention of doctors and nurses.
The METEOR study’s findings underscore the urgency of addressing workforce retention in the European healthcare sector, especially amid the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and an ageing population. The project’s scholars propose solutions such as onboarding and mentoring programmes, and changing hospital culture, to retain healthcare professionals and address the labour shortages.
During the interview, Matranga also discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) can help healthcare workers with tasks such as diagnosis, predicting outcomes, and patient care. She stressed the importance of carefully planned studies to check how well AI tools work in these areas.
The interview (in Italian) is available here
