Friday 17 September 2021, 19:49
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PROVINCE OF UTRECHT – People who work in healthcare are walking on their gums, says the trade union FNV Zorg & Welzijn. Absenteeism is high and the app groups of the various departments are filled with questions every weekend to come and work.
“You just notice that people are really tired,” says spokesperson Trudy van den Oosten of the Diakonessenhuis in Utrecht. “We really made the maximum effort last summer to allow everyone to take leave. Fortunately, because corona was much less, we succeeded. But you just hear it from people that they are tired.”
Nearly two in five healthcare workers have seen colleagues leave in the past year and a half. And one in five people consider leaving care themselves. Which the FNV notes after a survey of 12,218 members. The union conducts the survey every two years. But the latest version is the first since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. And of course the workload in healthcare was already high, but corona has made that even worse. And in three healthcare employees now say that they are in the workplace with too few people several times a week.
Emotional pressure
You hear the same thing in all departments, says Ellerieke Veenendaal, Clinic manager at the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort. “Every team has a group app to fill the rosters and you are actually never free again. Then you get apps: h, there is an evening shift sick. You then start thinking about whether you can help your colleagues. That emotional pressure, of always being on, I think that’s the biggest problem right now.”
Due to absenteeism, hospitals in our region also have trouble getting their schedules completed. Absenteeism is now, after the summer, higher than usual. “The crisis is turning a bit from corona to our employees,” says Veenendaal. In the UMC Utrecht, trade union consultant Lily van Dijken has recently been getting a lot more people at her desk “who are walking on their gums”. Some of the staff in the UMC therefore joins a strike on 28 September for a better collective labor agreement and therefore more wages.
The crisis is turning a bit from corona to our employees”
“The appreciation for the staff now at the UMC is sop, with biscuits, flowers and ugly towels. A lot of money has been invested in this recently, because it concerns more than twelve thousand employees. We don’t want sop, but a rock-hard pay raise.”
Healthcare sector is empty
According to the FNV, the healthcare sector is empty, but they do not want to go that far at the Diak and the Meander. The Diakonessenhuis gets the vacancies “on average still fairly filled”. Spokesperson Van den Oosten does not dare to say what the cause is, but she suspects that the working atmosphere and the small scale of the hospital also play a role. They don’t see any major exodus in Meander either, but it is clear that something has to be done. Just like in the Diakonessenhuis, they see a lot of benefit in training care staff there. Both spokespersons emphasize that the hospitals in the region are ‘working together intensively to provide maximum training’.
Veenendaal: “I am much more concerned about the number of people who are now going to do the training. I think there is a solution. That we should train a lot more. You then have to do something about the attractiveness of the profession and then you really get the salary.”
In addition, according to her, healthcare should also become more attractive by organizing it differently. In recent months, for example, attempts have been made to do something about the influx of patients at the Meander, but it is not easy to manage. Hospitals are now also in their stomachs with patients who should have been somewhere else and as a result it is only getting busier in the workplace.
“Nursing homes and home care also have a high absenteeism rate, which means that we have patients here who don’t really belong here,” Veenendaal clarifies. “It really requires a different view of care. We will have to look at which care do you provide in the hospital and which care should take place at home?”
Union leader Karim Skalli about the workload in healthcare–
Salary requirements
To start with, the FNV is fully committed to a higher salary for healthcare staff in the coming period. Yesterday in The Hague, the union received support from the House of Representatives, who called on the cabinet in a motion to increase salaries in care. Trade union director of FNV Zorg & Welzijn Karim Skalli hopes that these noises will survive the formation, but he is certain that something must be done.
“If you look at the fact that you have a sector where very important work is being done with the most vulnerable people in this society. And in a civilized country those people should also have the right to a very beautiful life. Then we must be prepared are – from politics – to add money to let people do that work.”
