Monday 15th November 2021
Compulsory vaccination for nurses
“Only about half of the geriatric nurses in the east vaccinated”
The corona outbreaks in nursing homes are increasing again, the traffic light parties are considering compulsory vaccination for certain professional groups. A lot of nurses would have to get vaccinated with it. The anger among the nursing staff is already high.
In the Brandenburg retirement home, in which 16 people recently died after a corona outbreak, only half of the staff were vaccinated. What caused an outcry across Germany is by no means an exception, as Christel Bienstein, President of the German Professional Association for Nursing Professions (DBFK), reports on ntv.de. For the East German old people’s homes, a vaccination rate of around 50 percent of the workforce is assumed, which is even less than in the population as a whole. The low rate has a lot to do with the fact that numerous helpers and assistants work in the homes without extensive training – who do not get enough information.
“As in all population groups, there are also fears about vaccination, which are mainly spread through social media,” reports Bienstein. However, she does not see the solution in compulsory vaccination, as the traffic light parties are currently discussing, but in direct contact with the unvaccinated in order to provide information, for example through doctors and vaccinated colleagues. “We have to address these people individually.” The head of the association also calls for the vaccination to be offered directly at the workplace so that caregivers do not have to queue for hours.
On the other hand, numerous nurses in Saxony would like to have their protection boosted with a booster vaccination, says Bienstein. But they would not get any because there were no cans available. At the same time, the carers are completely overburdened, and now they are also stigmatized as those who pass the virus on. “It’s exactly the other way around,” says the association president: Unvaccinated patients carry Corona to the wards. Through the vaccination, the entire population must help ensure that the nursing staff are not overburdened.
Covid patients deny Covid
According to Bienstein, their exposure to the pandemic continues to increase and the mood is “very bad”. The displeasure among caregivers grows in several directions. The workload increases when unvaccinated colleagues are transferred to other areas; So, towards them, too, the anger grows in some. In addition, there is growing annoyance that more and more patients are coming to hospitals who are not vaccinated – and some even in the intensive care unit still claim that Covid-19 does not exist, says the head of the association. According to the conspiracy theory, they are not told what they are suffering from instead.
According to Bienstein, the vaccination rate among employees is higher in hospitals and in western Germany. For the nurses it is estimated at 80 to 90 percent. According to Bienstein, there is no concrete data on the vaccination rate among nurses and their motives. In their opinion, these must first be available before mandatory vaccination is introduced. “It is absurd to require a vaccination if you do not have the data,” says the nursing representative. She does not accept the objection that this would cost more time: “The vaccination also eats up time.”
Bienstein fears that if vaccination is compulsory, other carers would turn their backs on the job. “That would be very dramatic.” In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, more than 1,000 intensive care nurses left their jobs because of the overload caused by the pandemic. It looks similar in other federal states. Because of the staff shortage, 22 percent of the intensive care units would have to close beds every day.
Accusation of being wrong in the job, outraged
Other voices are also warning of a migration of nurses in the event of compulsory vaccination. The board of directors of the German Foundation for Patient Protection, for example, Eugen Brysch, reckons on the basis of figures from Great Britain with 1.2 million geriatric nurses in Germany with at least 100,000 employees who would not be vaccinated despite being required to be vaccinated. If they were no longer used, up to 200,000 people in need of care could no longer be offered care, according to Brysch. The federal government’s authorized nursing officer, Andreas Westerfellhaus, also warned on Deutschlandfunk that there was no refusal to allow the staff to take more sick leave.
But there are also numerous advocates of compulsory vaccination for care, such as the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina or the Marburger Bund. According to the “Politbarometer”, 71 percent of the population are in favor of such an obligation. The accusation that those who do not get vaccinated as a carer are wrong in their job, however, annoys Bienstein very much. The staff has been doing “an awful lot” for two years, and there has been a nursing emergency for 20 years.
The structures of the German health system would have to be changed, said the head of the association. Because a nurse in the hospital has to care for up to 13 patients per shift, in Norway, however, 4.5. In a German old people’s home, a nurse is even responsible for 52 residents at night. Bienstein is outraged that these people, of all people, should do more good than the rest of the population. There is a code of ethics for the industry, “colleagues know that they are responsible”.