[What is a statistical genocide? Memo for an active nursing management of the new reform of the national health system].

Abstract

. What is a statistical genocide? Memo for an active nursing management of the new reform of the national health system. A recent editorial note in a journal which is certainly culturally and not only scientifically relevant as The Lancet, underlines how statistics, a discipline and methodology expected to be highly reliable and needed to produce critical evidences for programming and evaluating health issues and interventions, has become in various scenarios a misleading tool, by its capacity of using data to manipulate epidemiological information which coincides with the specific cancellation of situations of violation of human and health rights. As we live in a time and in contexts where data are becoming the protagonists of the decision-making processes from the digitalisation of all information, to the uncontrollable dependence from algorithms in deciding priorities and 'personalised' care the alarm raised deserves attention: not exclusively to avoid misled behaviour, but more importantly to assure better and truly innovative practices. In the present challenging situation, which sees the nursing profession planned to acquire more substantial autonomy in the production of knowledge, the alarm could and should be interpreted as a 'sentinel provocation' (and concrete model scenarios are proposed) to manage and utilise data which focus and made better targeted populations more exposed to conditions of fragility and marginalisation: the dominance of administrative data directed mainly to monitor economic sustainability, must be integrated and re-directed to a care where the human rights to health are the indicators and the measure of outcomes.