More and more bed deficit due to lack of nurses

The pediatrician Edmond Rings (Erasmus MC and LUMC) drew the map: of the 108 intensive Dutch baby beds, 74 have been open since Tuesday. Because Amsterdam UMC has closed eleven of its nineteen beds. And it is also a summer vacation. Rings counts just as quickly: "Normally, we are in the summer at 80% of national capacity, because doctors and nurses go on vacation, but now we are at 68%." That means parents of one sick child will have to drive much further. "

These are children with acute distress, serious infections, or who came under a car. Or children with chronic diseases, in which more organs fail at the same time.

Yesterday, the children's IC of Amsterdam VU medical center was completely closed; children will only be readmitted in September. Recently, children's beds have been closed in Leiden, The Hague, Groningen, Veldhoven and Emmen. This happens a lot in intensive care in university hospitals, but also in regular children's services. The reason: too few specialized staff, especially pediatric nurses.

Shortage

The shortage of nurses is becoming painful in places where the most specialized nurses are needed. In addition, the summer holidays have begun: when a number of nurses are on vacation and a colleague says he is ill, a general nurse can often be replaced. But a nurse who knows everything about intensive care, surgery, oncology, emergency care or children's ICs – you do not find that out.

Surgeons in Groningen also perform 10 to 15% less operations than usual. As a result, more and more patients end up on a waiting list. "Cancer patients too," says an oncologist. Surgeons of the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis (OLVG) in Amsterdam also reduced by 10 to 15% operations compared to last year. In Arnhem, they also notice the shortage: "If someone says he is ill, there is no reason to absorb this work," according to an urologist. Then there are closed beds. In Leeuwarden, they feel the shortage in the emergency department. This leads to longer wait times; sometimes, the emergency room for major acute care (severe accidents) temporarily closes. A neurologist in Leeuwarden: "The nurses who are there become overworked."

In Amsterdam, the shortage of nurses is once again reinforced by the housing market. Buying and renting prices have increased so much in the last two years that nurses can not get home. "We often see nurses settling in the area [Amsterdam uit, red.] as there is simply no possibility to buy a bigger house if they have children," said the doorkeeper. word of OLVG. Affordable parking is also impossible in the capital, making work for nurses in other places more attractive.

What hospitals do not do, stresses the spokesman of the Máxima Medical Center in Veldhoven, is simply to continue with the patients. . "We are closing the beds so we can guarantee the quality of care we provide." The closure of the beds is not immediately embarrassing for residents of the area; Opening the beds with too few nurses would be worse

Student Summit

Two weeks ago, the seventeen universities of applied sciences that train nurses decided to abandon the university. school from 2019. They were in a vicious circle: because of the shortage in the workplace, nurses have little time to train trainees. An internship is an essential part of the program and therefore programs have had a student stop: only four hundred nurses per program could be trained per year. But because of the numerus fixus, applied since 2012, too few nurses have entered the labor market for too long, so the scarcity in the workplace has increased again.

In addition, many nurses are leaving: last year, nearly 80,000 nurses left care – hospitals, district nursing homes and nursing homes. On many occasions, it appears that irregular services are their main complaint. This is also the result of a recent study by the Stichting Arbeidsmarkt Ziekenhuizen, when researchers asked what were the reasons for leaving young nurses. Other complaints: too few career opportunities, too little salary, too much pressure at work. More than 125,000 new nurses will be needed over the next two years.

It is in this sense that the most propitious moment for nurses to take action: on Monday, they began working at the medical center of Leiden University. Six hundred nurses sat on the floor in the lobby, protesting against the collective labor agreement proposed by the university hospitals. The same thing happened at the UMC Utrecht on Tuesday. Nurses want more pay, less pressure at work and more space to refrain from working in the evenings and nights when they are over 57 years old. There are 60,000 nurses, caregivers and doctors under the collective labor agreement for teaching hospitals

. The patients would suffer.