The role played by nurses so far regarding right to care has been captured in the Law for Health Professions Rules of Conduct (LOPS) of November 21st, 2033, which incorporates a structure allowing each qualified person to contribute to ensure the effective right of citizens to receive adequate and quality care. Nurses are assigned the personal provision of care or services within their professional competence in the different stages of the healthcare process, and they are granted the management, evaluation and provision of nursing care targeted to health promotion, maintenance and recovery, as well as for prevention of diseases and disabilities.

Regardless of the clarity of the regulation mentioned, the Ministry of Education and Professional Training has just created a degree which collides directly with it: Supervision for Sociosanitary Care. Its objective is the coordination of the work by the sociosanitary care teams and of the resources to guarantee patient-centred care, and it is granted the ability to conduct health interventions owned by the nursing profession, such as specific nursing care, both basic and complex. Said interventions require disciplinary and technological knowledge, as well as the competence to take on a supervision role in the Nursing settings, as well as in the settings of other professions such as: Physical Therapy, Medicine, Psychology, or Occupational Therapy.

The creation of this professional profile is derived of the objectives of the Plan for Professional Training Modernization of July 2020; one of its objectives is to establish a series of priority sectors, including patient care, which in the new degree is now assigned to professionals trained within a shorter time and at a lower level than nurses.

For an overall understanding of the current scenario of care deficit for the population, the serious shortage of nurses at the centres must be taken into account, and more particularly in the sociosanitary setting. But regardless of this, the solutions adopted cannot be solely derived from economistic and claimed modernity criteria, and they cannot be carried out without considering the authorized voice from all the professions involved.

The creation of the Supervision for Sociosanitary Care degree not only makes the two previous mistakes, but also shows the lack of political acknowledgment of the perspective and work of nurses, expressing a clear lack of interest for ensuring the right to care by the citizenship, and also making deeper the invisibility of this group formed by professionals committed to society and at its service.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the vital importance of the contribution by nurses for the healthcare of persons, and after its worst stages, the time seems to have come for policy makers and institutions to keep the commitments acquired in 2020 through the Nursing Now campaign and the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. These commitments are associated with the empowerment of the nursing profession and their essential involvement in decision making.

On the contrary, the creation of the Supervision for Sociosanitary Care degree demonstrates that both the Ministry of Education and Professional Training and the Ministry of Health are not fulfilling their obligation to provide society with care based on professional excellence, which can only be provided with the involvement of the perspective by nurses in all settings of health planning and management.

Therefore, the issue at this time is not asking if the citizenship is entitled to quality care in all levels and dimensions; this has already been established by the laws in this country. This is about highlighting and exposing the reasons that lead the maximum political authorities to break these laws by making rules which hinder the access to the right to quality care. Therefore, this is now one of the key responsibilities for nurses: to highlight and expose any rule or circumstance which infringes upon the right to care.