The situation in Swiss hospitals is dramatic: there are hardly any beds left due to the flu, corona and RS virus. The biggest problem, however, is the lack of skilled workers – and this is only going to get worse.
This Geneva nurse still works in her profession – many of her former colleagues have left.
“Hospitals under constant stress”. “Conditions like in a third world country”. “Stop admissions to emergency departments due to flu and staff shortages”. This is a selection of alarming headlines from the past few days. In fact, the situation is dramatic. In the canton of Bern, for example, almost all hospital beds were occupied before the end of the year week, when experience has shown that there are many skiing accidents. The Spitalzentrum Oberwallis cannot transfer patients who have survived the worst from the emergency room: no space in other departments.
The RS virus, an extraordinarily strong wave of influenza and Covid-19 are causing a multiple crisis. It challenges a healthcare system that has been hit hard after almost three years of the pandemic. There is a shortage of general practitioners, paediatricians and psychiatrists. But especially to nursing professionals. They got a lot of applause and attention. Nevertheless, hundreds of nurses flee the profession every month. Burned out.
Desperate recruitment
So it is difficult to cope with the current onslaught of sick and injured people. A connoisseur of the scene says: The hospital director who claims that he has never had to close a ward due to a lack of staff is lying. The HR managers in many nursing homes and Spitex organizations are also desperately looking for specialists to fill the gaps in the roster.
Some are therefore already talking about a nursing shortage. But what we are experiencing is only a foretaste of what is to come. The prospects are bleak: only a small proportion of the baby boomers born between 1945 and 1970 are of an age when the need for healthcare services is increasing sharply. That is why Switzerland will need tens of thousands of new, well-trained nurses in the coming years.
Without immigrants and cross-border commuters, the local healthcare system would be in a bind. In nursing, every third specialist does not have a Swiss passport. But this is not a sustainable model. Covering the additional demand with people from abroad will not work, if only because the demographic development in the neighboring countries is very similar – and they will pull out all the stops to keep their own skilled workers. But it would also be unfair if Switzerland, as a free rider, wanted to benefit even more from the training efforts of other countries.
This realization is becoming more and more popular in society and politics, and the care initiative adopted a year ago is proof of this. Parliament recently passed a first package to implement the referendum: the federal government is to invest half a billion francs in the training of nursing professionals over the next eight years. This is urgently needed. But the liberation will only succeed if the cantons also participate: they would have to make half the funds available. So far, however, the cantons have not shown much enthusiasm for the training offensive.
Fast career exit
In any case, it would only solve part of the problem if there were more offspring to care for. At least as serious is the fact that too many nurses – the profession is still largely female – give up the job after a few years. This has hardly anything to do with wages, but a lot to do with working conditions. Caring for patients day and night is physically and mentally draining. The irregular working hours are difficult to reconcile with family life.
The hospitals and nursing homes must therefore find ways to reduce the burden on their employees, for example through rosters that are more in line with the needs of the caregivers. Through care offers for children in off-peak times. Or by relieving you of tiresome paperwork that goes beyond the really necessary documentation.
Because nobody wants to imagine what will happen in this country if the baby boomers don’t get the care they deserve one day.