The resumption of regular care “is very complex,” says Bart Berden, chairman of the Regional Consultative Committee on Acute Care in North Brabant. He thinks it will take at least a week and a half before the planned care starts to get going again. One of the major stumbling blocks in his region is the mental state of the highly burdened medical staff, he explains.
“After each shift, we give our employees the opportunity to speak to a psychologist,” says Berden. “A lot of it is used. A quarter of the staff say they need psychological assistance.”
Pay attention to load capacity
Absenteeism due to illness among health workers is normally around 4 percent, but is now 6 percent, he reports. Many people in health care have been heavily burdened for weeks. “We will have to pay more attention to this than usual, especially before those people can be deployed again.”
Absenteeism is also higher due to physical complaints among employees, also due to the many coronavirus infections among healthcare staff. “We have to pay attention to the workload of the employees,” says Berden. “If we don’t do that, the absenteeism will continue to rise.”
Another reason that regular care cannot just run at full speed is the need to redesign physical spaces in hospitals. Many operating rooms and other rooms are provisionally furnished as IC rooms to absorb the peak in corona patients. Now that has to be reversed. Beds and machines need to be moved, things cleaned, equipment calibrated. Safety is paramount.
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