How the lower limits for nursing staff are leveraged.
For many years, too few nurses have been trained in our company. It will, in turn, take many years to remedy the blatant shortage of nursing staff. So far not much has been done to make the nursing profession more attractive, on the contrary: the working hours are still overwhelmingly hostile to life, shift work is harmful to health, and there are far from enough part-time models. The pay is still modest. Salaries are significantly lower in the east than in the west, and even in this area women earn significantly less than men for the same work: female nurses earn an average gross annual salary of 37,700 euros, almost twelve percent less than male nurses with 42,200 euros.
Hospitals have to make a profit, which is why the number of cases is increasing and the length of stay is getting shorter and shorter. Paying according to the number of cases has led to an enormous increase in workload, and even rushed work and overtime can no longer compensate for this. The mood is at zero on many stations.
Exodus of nursing staff in Germany
There has been an exodus of nurses. The shortage of nursing staff has now become a nursing emergency. Wards are understaffed, which further worsens the work situation of the remaining nurses: a vicious circle. The legislator has come up with something that seems sensible at first glance: the lower limit for nursing staff. It sets minimum standards for the staffing of wards and determines the minimum number of nurses required for patient care. If this limit is not reached, individual hospital rooms or entire wards have to be closed. The intention was to reduce the increasing overburden and create an incentive to build up sufficient care capacity.
However, a survey of almost 1,000 nurses by their professional association showed that the opposite has happened. Many hospital operators understood the lower limit as an upper limit and withdrew nurses where the lower limit was exceeded. Temporary work increased massively in order to be able to keep stations open. Nurses were shifted to and from where they were needed to meet the numerical requirements. Patients were transferred to areas where the regulation did not apply. Rosters have been manipulated to include workers such as hygiene officers or equipment managers who work on wards but not in nursing.
To person
dr medical Bernd Hontschik is a surgeon and publicist: www.medizinHuman.de
Nursing emergency in Germany: escalation due to corona pandemic
All of this was true before the Corona pandemic. Corona has caused a further escalation. Exceptions came into play, the minimum staffing levels were suspended, working time regulations and prescribed rest periods no longer applied. In addition to applause, the nursing staff were also promised bonus payments. They are still a long time coming, and contrary to the first announcements, not everyone will get anything. Only in clinics that treated more than ten Covid 19 cases with artificial ventilation in 2021 should a bonus of a maximum of 550 euros be paid out by December 2022. Of the 710,000 nursing staff, this only affects around 280,000, i.e. around forty percent. Everyone else gets nothing, including the employees in the 72,000 medical practices. So that should have been all the financial recognition for the tremendous work with which nurses and caregivers have so far mastered the extreme stress of the corona pandemic?
According to surveys, half of those who have fled their profession would return to care if there was decent pay, good working conditions and genuine appreciation. But so far there can be no question of that. Not even with a bonus payment. (Bernd Hontschik)
