☞The NMPT has for a few years been calling for introducing statutory regulations concerning the principles of convoying the inmates of hospitals and psychiatric wards who are subject to a security measure outside those facilities to a medical appointment, examination or procedure. Nurse call system Safety of inmates of psychiatric facilities, which should be treated as a priority, is one of the elements of patients’ protection rights which is verified every year by the NMPT during visits to psychiatric establishments. According to the NMPT, efficiently operating nurse call system easily accessible to each inmate must not be overestimated in this respect. Although since 2015121 the NMPT has been calling for regulating this issue statutorily, it has remained unresolved. Personnel vacancies Psychiatric hospitals visited in 2019 had serious problems with ensuring sufficient number of staff, including doctors, nurses or psychologists. Underfunding of the healthcare sector results in fluctuation of personnel who, having acquired experience and education, go away to better paid facilities. Vacancies are filled with less experienced staff. Significant staff rotation may distort treatment continuity. However, such a situation is not to do with malicious behaviour of the management of the facilities visited; It results from lack of funds to ensure appropriate levels of salaries. Placing minors together with adults in psychiatric facilities On 12 February 2018 Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Health wrote a letter to the President of the National Health Fund, in which he informed that due to a growing number of psychiatric patients below 18 years of age who require hospitalization and due to insufficient number of places in paediatric/youth psychiatric wards one should enable the provision of guaranteed healthcare services for minors in the facilities for adults. Thus, on 13 March 2019 the Director of Healthcare Department of Mazovia Province Office in Warsaw sent a letter to the hospitals, informing that due to a difficult situation of the sector of psychiatric services for children and youth, it is admissible to place minors above 17 years of age together with adults. The proposed solution is objected by the NMPT due to a need to provide for specific security conditions to children and youth placed in psychiatric wards. A case of raping minor inmates of a psychiatric ward for adults of the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital in Gdańsk in 2019, which was broadcasted throughout Poland is the best demonstration of threats lurking for the young people who require psychiatric hospitalization and who are hospitalized together with adults. Such situations are particularly dangerous, also due to the above mentioned staff vacancies. 121 See Commissioner of Human Rights’ Reports on the operation of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Tortures for the years: 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Report of the Commissioner for Human Rights on the activities of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture in Poland in 2019 53