High hiring rate of nurses in Catalonia and the rest of Spain hides precarious employment from 2010 to 2019: A quantitative study

Abstract

Aim: This study aims to describe the hiring of nurses in Catalonia and the rest of Spain over 10 years.Background: Precarious employment (PE) has negative consequences for nurses' quality of life and work performance.Methods: Quantitative study using a retrospective, longitudinal, descriptive design.We analysed publicly available employment data from Catalonia and the rest of Spain. Results: Nurses are among the health professionals with the lowest proportion of open-term (permanent) contracts, 25% during the first 4 years of employment. During the study period, each nurse hired had an average of 3.44 contracts per year. The proportion of nurses with a fixed-term (non-permanent) contract shrank from 25.3% in 2006 to 20.5% in 2012 and grew rapidly to 38.7% in 2018. We estimate that 14,800 nurses signed fixed-term contracts in 2018 without ever having registered as unemployed in nursing. Conclusion: High rates of fixed-term hiring and the high number of contracts per nurse are evidence of a high level of PE for nurses in Catalonia. Implications for Nursing Management: When policymakers and workforce planners design recruitment and retention programmes for nurses, they should consider improving working conditions by extending more open-term contracts to combat PE and, indirectly, the shortage of nurses.

Factors associated with the attraction and retention of family and community medicine and nursing residents in rural settings: a qualitative study

“…While medical residents claim that they are offered the possibility of accessing stable interim contracts, the same is not true for nurses, who complain that they do not have the opportunity to access stable contracts. Nurses are among the health professionals with the lowest proportion of permanent contracts, standing at 25% during the first 4 years of employment in Catalonia [ 57 ]. Spain’s precarious employment of nurses and the emigration of nurses to work in other European countries or around the world during the last decades has been well documented in previous studies [ 58 ].…”

Factors associated with the recruitment and retention of family and community medicine and nursing residents in rural settings: A qualitative study

“…While medical residents claim that they are offered the possibility of accessing stable interim contracts, the same is not true for nursing, where they complain that they do not have the opportunity to access stable contracts. Nurses are among the health professionals with the lowest proportion of permanent contracts, which stood at 25% during the rst 4 years of employment in Catalonia [41]. Spain's precarious employment of nurses and the emigration of nurses to work in other European countries or around the world during the last decades has been well documented in previous studies [42].…”

Working conditions in nursing in the face of Covid-19 from the perspective of precariousness

“…Temporary contracts have been implemented since the 1970s, showing a strong increase in recent years ( 11 ) . In a Spanish study on the temporary hiring of nurses ( 12 ) , the authors observed that the proportion of workers with a fixed-term contract grew by 38.7% in 2018. Still in the same study, nurses were the healthcare workers with the highest proportion of temporary contracts in the first four years after completing their degree.…”