02/12/2016

A European project on rationing of nursing care, whose members include Dr Pilar Fuster, is launched in Brussels

The European project "Rationing - Missed Nursing Care: An International and Multidimensional Problem", of which Dr Pilar Fuster, a lecturer at UIC Barcelona, is a member, held its first meeting in Brussels. The aim of the project, which received approximately €60 million worth of funding from the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), is to improve scientific and technical research across Europe and mitigate the negative effects of care rationing on patients, nurses and organisations. The Rationing of Care (RANCARE) Action strives to facilitate discussion from a cross-national comparative perspective, with implications for practice and professional development.

Dr Pilar Fuster and Cristóbal Rengel, from the Virgen de la Victoria University Hospital in Malaga and associate lecturer in the Faculty of Health Science's Department of Nursing at the University of Malaga, are the Action's Spanish representatives; an Action that was one of 26 projects chosen from the 260 proposals submitted to the European Union. Its participants hail from 28 countries, both from within and outside the European Union, and work in all disciplines: nursing, psychology, philosophy, ethics, health economics and health management.

The Action will be carried out in the form of four working groups and two horizontal committees, which will supervise the activities that are scheduled to take place during the project's four-year term. Each group will address a different area: group one, conceptualisation, organisational and methodological problems; group two, evidence-based interventions and design; group three, the ethical dimensions of rationing nursing care; and lastly, group four will focus on education and entertainment.