“Care personnel who see patients must have passed a language test in Swedish.”
It was an election issue in SVT’s electoral compass that all governing parties in Region Västmanland (M, KD and L) signed on to in 2022. The Sweden Democrats, who cooperate with the board, also agreed with the claim. The Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Sweden Democrats marked the issue as particularly important in the electoral compass.
Language representatives must support colleagues
But there won’t be any language tests for healthcare workers in Region Västmanland. Different types of further education are now being tested instead. One variant is that healthcare staff are trained to support colleagues, so-called language agents. Employees can also take courses in nursing Swedish.
About ten employees are currently further training in one of the variants.
– The regional board has set a task to review so that our employees must master Swedish in order to be able to communicate with the patients. Based on this, a project has been started with language representatives to strengthen our employees’ language. This will be evaluated, says Stephanie Bruksgård (M), regional council.
Why were there no language requirements or language tests?
– In our agreement, between the governing parties, we have agreed that we need to find a solution to the criticism that there has been that patients do not always feel understood. Based on this, we added a task to our regional plan, which became this project, says Stephanie Bruksgård.
In the clip, SVT follows assistant nurse Maya Laurila in Fagersta as she supports colleagues with the language.