STAFFING SHORTAGE OF NURSING PERSONNEL AS AN ACTUAL HEALTH CARE PROBLEM

The problem of nursing shortage is one of the most important health care problems in the world at whole and in Russia. It affects lowering the level of nursing care quality, the level of interaction between different categories of staff and finally patient satisfaction. Being common for all medical institutions, there are still specific features of these processes in certain regions, including large cities. So the purpose of this study was to analyze the dynamics and trends of the provision of nursing personnel in St. Petersburg. The official statistics data were used with the calculation of extensive, intensive, ratio indicators, dynamic series (with their alignment by the least squares method), calculation of indicators trends up to 2030. It was found that in 2009 the index of provision of nursing personnel in St. Petersburg was 93.6 (per 10 thousand population), and in 2018 it decreased to 81.9 (by 12.5%). There was also a decreasing of this indicator in medical organizations of regional subordination (from 73.6 to 70.3), but the rate of this decreasing was significantly lower (4.5%). In general, the decline in overall was steady, and according to development forecasts it will continue, the dynamics in regional organizations was multidirectional and some growth of the indicator may be seen in the future. The provision of nurses and midwives decreases in dynamics,
and the provision of nurses and X-ray technicians is increasing. The ratio of doctors to nursing staff in the city as a whole decreased from 1.5 to 1.4 with a tendency to a subsequent decrease, for
regional organizations it increased from 1.16 to 1.4 and in the future it may increase to 2.2. Staffing in general and in regional medical organizations differs slightly and the changes in dynamics are not significant. In future we should expect a decrease of this indicator. Thus, the study showed a pronounced shortage of nursing personnel in medical organizations of St. Petersburg (especially in federal organizations), which requires the adoption of comprehensive measures aimed to stabilize and improve this situation.