When the World Health Organization (WHO) designated 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and of the Midwife, celebrating the 200th anniversary of birth of the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, had no idea how the year would begin for nurses around the world.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the professionalism and preciousness of the nursing staff emerged. The Coronavirus emergency has also made us rediscover the importance of the National Health System and the value of those who serve it: doctors, nurses, social and health workers and other professionals who, in the face of the emergency of an unknown enemy, have been able to reinvent the profession by making you deal with your own insecurities, fears and death, finding a lifeline in the relationship with colleagues and rediscovering the human side of assistance.
There is one category in particular that has been affected by this emergency: they are all those hired during the emergency and who have started working in Covid departments. Over the last few months, many young health professionals have passed from university exams to the trenches of the departments: recent graduates who have just entered the world of work have found themselves “on the front line”. A generation deeply marked, from a professional and personal point of view, which had to immediately engage in delicate roles. Thousands of people responded to the appeals of the ASL, which hired them with contracts later renamed “Covid contracts”.
Today, a year later, we ask ourselves: what is the cost of all this? What are the damages that these professionals suffer today?