Healthcare | THL: The number of nurses and doctors in counseling centers and schools has decreased

Nurses and the number of doctors in maternity and children’s clinics as well as in school and student health care has decreased, informs the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare (THL).

THL has collected data on the number of nurses and doctors in consultation rooms and in school and student health care since 2004. Based on the monitoring, the growth of human resources that lasted for years seems to have stopped and turned to a decline last year.

There are huge differences in human resources between welfare regions. Depending on the region, according to THL, one school nurse can treat 376–625 students and a doctor 2,040–7,768 students.

Staffing recommendations are implemented in varying ways. For example, the number of school doctors has been lower than recommended throughout the monitoring period, and in the most recent measurement, the recommendation was realized only in Pirkanmaa. According to the recommendation, there can be no more than 2,100 students per doctor.

School nurses last year was the number required by the recommendation in almost all welfare areas, i.e. a maximum of 600 students per one health nurse.

In student health care, less than half of the health centers had the number of nurses required by the recommendations. As far as doctors are concerned, the recommendation is implemented only every ten.

There are also shortcomings in the implementation of recommendations in maternity and child counseling services. For example, about every third health center had the number of consultants required by the recommendations.

Chief physician of THL Marke Hietanen-Peltola says in the institution’s announcement that the reduction of resources affects the availability and quality of preventive health services.

“Promoting well-being and health is always also preventing marginalization. There is no way regional equality and equality will be realized now,” he points out.

The data collection was sent to all health centers in Finland last April. According to THL, the response rate was 93.