The Impact of the Health Care System Reform on the Romanian Nurses Professionalization Process

The Romanian health sector went through a process of reform began in 2000 which entered into a final adjustment phase in 2010 when the economic crisis, the health professionals accelerated trend of labour migration, the precarious health of the population brought new challenges to the unsolved existing problems. Nurses are numerically the most important category of health professionals. Since 1994 they experienced a convergent movement of professionalization in the interior of the nurse profession. The aim of the study is to explore the nurses’ perceptions of the impact of the health care system reform on their own profession and on the internal process of professionalization. As a result a quantitative research was conducted on a sample including 411 nurses of different specialties working in Iasi county. The results of the research point out the significant impact of factors related to the reform of the health care system on the quality of the care process, on the nurses’ work conditions and professional satisfaction. The external disruptive factors produce negative effects on nurses’ group cohesion, despite the centripetal efforts of the professional organization and induce a slowdown movement of the nurses professionalization process.