MMore staff, higher salaries, a better work-life balance: According to the will of Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD), the working conditions of nursing staff should improve noticeably. “Care needs to be expanded at all levels,” Lauterbach said Thursday on International Nursing Day, which celebrates the birthday of British nurse Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. The goal is to attract more young people to the profession, to retain the existing nursing staff and to bring back those who have been lost.
Lauterbach was clearly trying to express his appreciation for the care. This is “one of the most important components of every humane society,” he said at an event organized by the German care network, an initiative founded by his company. Nevertheless, his words are likely to cause disappointment in the industry. Nurses and geriatric nurses have often heard similar announcements – but Lauterbach was not able to announce quick improvements either.
“Promises alone are worthless”
“We are exhausted,” says Daniel Richter, who has worked in nursing for 26 years and heads a psychiatric ward at a hospital in Düsseldorf. “And sobered up. After so much clapping for us two years ago, the expectation was very high that something would actually change.” So far, however, nothing has been noticed. The 47-year-old not only wants a higher salary for himself and his colleagues, but above all binding staff ratios. Although there are legally defined minimum staffing levels for certain wards in the hospitals, they only set the minimum and are repeatedly undermined in practice, as nurses describe. Where beds should actually be blocked when staff is absent, patients continue to be admitted – at the expense of the nursing staff.
The Verdi trade union and the German Hospital Society therefore called on the traffic light coalition to quickly introduce an instrument for staffing in hospitals developed together with the German Nursing Council, which should be more closely based on actual needs. In fact, it is agreed in the coalition agreement between the SPD, Greens and FDP that this instrument should come “at short notice”. Now it must finally be implemented, said Sylvia Bühler, member of the Verdi federal board. The President of the German Nursing Council, Christine Vogler, also complained that promises alone were “worthless”. According to Lauterbach, the Ministry of Health is still examining how the personnel assessment tool can be implemented. A sticking point is the question of what the consequences are if the nursing staff are overworked. Then there must be a relief, so Lauterbach.
Relief collective agreements as a solution?
In his view, this is the key to better staffing in nursing. The problem is rarely the payment, he said – even if salaries continue to rise and the salary gap between elderly and nursing needs to be closed. “Care is underpaid,” says Lauterbach. The bigger problem for the staff in old people’s homes and hospitals is working piecework, the feeling of never having enough time for patients and nursing home residents. This is how station manager Richter describes it: “Caring is a really nice job – if you can do it the way you want it to.”
Lauterbach expressed sympathy for the relief collective agreements, such as those concluded by Verdi with the Charité and the Vivantes clinic group, and for which the employees of six university clinics in North Rhine-Westphalia are currently on strike. Among other things, these collective agreements provide for specific personnel ratios and compensation if they cannot be met – at Vivantes, for example, in the form of a free shift or compensation. The conclusion of such contracts is the task of the collective bargaining partners, said Lauterbach. Personally, however, he believes that they are going in the right direction.
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